This ultimately advances the conservatives' cause anyway. Just like they constantly attack Democratic presidents and candidates as though they were Communists; if a right-winger like Clinton or Obama is a "radical far-left extremist", than real leftists are shut out of politics altogether.

As for the Tea-Party movement, they are essentially peddling a conspiratorial worldview, and if you have personal experience with groups revolving around such narratives you know that they often don't pay much attention to a person's ideology so long as they espouse the same conspiratorial narrative. Take the 9-11 Truth movement for example. Within their ranks you find people who sound like radical leftists, while also finding people who are flat out neo-Nazis. Nobody seems to care if the culprit is the Illuminati, the CFR, the UN, or The Jooz, all that matters is that you vehemently reject the idea that it was 19 Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.

This is why the Tea-Party movement will never be able to sweep the Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists from their ranks- once you open the door to conspiracies, who's to say it isn't "the Jooz" behind all their woes? Plus neo-Nazis are experienced at hiding their true beliefs in order to recruit in groups they feel comfortable around. They know that the more pissed off a group of middle-class whites are, the less they will ask questions about the occasional allusion to race or da Jooz.

i'm fine with that if they're replacing republicans.

Poor people used to be liberal, and let the Fed help the farmer, but now all that matters are social non-issues: yes to prayer in schools, no to abortion, yes to the military, no to welfare, no to equal rights, no to gays, etc. They see themselves as moral Christians, and don't think too much about the technicalities. (Add "no to thinking" to their list.)

What got me were some supporters saying that Palin was awesome because she is for less taxes and smaller government. What they fail to mention is that Palin is not anywhere a "true" libertarian (she's big on governing via the Christian religion & meddling with other countries with the use of force).

Her, Beck & others also rail on about being against the banker bailouts, but offer no alternative for dealing with the calamity that would have occured had the 5 main US banking conglomerates been brought to their knees. People like to hear simple answers that makes easy sense to their simple biases without grapsing just how complex (& messed up) the whole financial, economic and political system is.

Of course no serving politician will come right out and say how bad things are. Just keep the fingers crossed and borrow just a little bit more to get us through the next term. Frustrating now matter where you sit on the fence.

Conservatism has always – back to the days of Edmund Burke – been closely aligned with intellectual nihilism. Buckley hid it behind polysyllabics. Now, they don't even bother to try. Bush fit naturally into the shit-kicking, aw-shucks good-old-boy persona. Everything else about him, like the god-damned Crawford non-ranch was a made-for-TV fantasy.

I was conservative in my youth, deeply influenced by Catholic upbringing and a far right high school government teacher. Living in the real world moved me to the left of center. The Clinton impeachment made me realize the boundless evil of Repugnicants. Bush radicalized me. That's why I have a running series on my blog called "Republicans, All Wrong All the Time."

Seriously, they have not done anything right in 50 years.

WASF,
JzB

The obvious difference, of course, is that A. there's no clear leader to the current movement, no matter what Glenn Beck thinks of himself, and B. this time the batshittedness is coalescing within one of the two major political parties. Which is really bad news for all concerned, since it seems to threaten to render that party frighteningly toxic.

One can only hope that the current movement breaks off and forms a third party, with the inevitable fate that accompanies that decision…