Tea Party Activists Push GOP Even Further Right

i just found this on a leftist site. http://www.dscc.org

its either good news for us or bad news for them, either way the tea party movement is making waves.

Tea Party Activists Push GOP Even Further Right
Thu Oct 22 2009 18:25:00 GMT-0400 (EDT) | by Arjun Jaikumar

Rather unfortunate news for those few people who still think the GOP can effectively represent part of the country’s mainstream.

As if it weren’t obvious enough by the actions of their leaders, the Wall Street Journal reports that right-wing activists are now poised to torpedo a Republican candidate in a New York race who is insufficiently beholden to GOP orthodoxy.

And they don’t look like they’re going to stop there. After they finish in upstate New York, they’re going to try and sink Charlie Crist in Florida:

"He was Judas to the Republican Party in the state of Florida and across the country," says Robin Stublen, 53, of Punta Gorda, co-state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, a loose national coalition. "He sold us out for 13 pieces of gold."

And they are not happy in Illinois:

"Personally, I'm just as fed up with the Republican Party as the Democratic Party," says Catherina Wojtowicz, coordinator of the Chicago tea-party group. "The Republican Party looks great on paper. But the people who call themselves Republicans, with a few exceptions, have no idea what the party stands for, or don't care."

This would all be somewhat understandable if the tea partiers were just some fringe figures with no influence on the mainstream of the GOP.

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the tea partiers ARE the GOP, and they’re running the Republican show in Washington:

Republican leaders in Washington, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, are trying to align the GOP with the protesters' frustrations, praising their actions and echoing their arguments.

There you have it – a Republican party beholden to the far, far right, and continuously remaking itself in that model.