Even Ann Coulter Knows The Teabaggers Demanding The GOP Move Further Right Are, In Her Words, "Moron Showoffs"

Even a crackpot right-wing publicity hound like Ann Coulter can smell a delusional moron on the far right when she's confronted with one. In her column for some lunatic fringe website yesterday, Coulter castigated Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots as a "small mind" for blaming Romney for the big Republican Party electoral defeats across the nation this month. She objected to Martin's statement about Romney's unsuitability as a Republican candidate in statements like this: "What we got was a weak, moderate candidate handpicked by the Beltway elites and country club establishment wing of the Republican Party. The presidential loss is unequivocally on them." Coulter points to Romney's success in 7 months of Republican primaries that included notable far right extremists like Tea Party Queen Michele Bachmann, Texas Know Nothing Rick Perry, and neo-fascist religionist fanatic Rick Santorum.

The idea that Romney failed to present a clear contrast with Obama or was too "nice" is also nonsense. If Republicans continue to tell themselves comforting myths about our candidate being the problem, they better get used to losing a lot more elections.

...To the extent Republicans have a problem with their candidates, it's not that they're not conservative enough. Where are today's Nelson Rockefellers, Arlen Specters or George H.W. Bushes? Happily, they have gone the way of leprosy.

Having vanquished liberal Republicans, the party's problem now runs more along the lines of moron showoffs, trying to impress tea partiers like Jenny Beth Martin by taking insane positions on rape exceptions for abortion-- as 2 million babies are killed every year from pregnancies having nothing to do with rape.

Romney lost because he was running against an incumbent, was beaten up during a long and vicious primary fight, and ran in a year with a very different electorate from 1980. At least one of those won't be true next time. But we're not going to win any elections by telling ourselves fairy tales about a candidate who lost because he wasn't conservative enough, articulate enough or mean enough.

Romney, Coulter claimed, is much further right than Ronald Reagan ever was. And the Tea Party, clearly dragged down Romney and the GOP's chances in the Senate. Key House teabaggers, including Allen West (R-FL), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), Sandy Adams (R-FL), Joe Walsh (R-IL) and Quico Conseco (R-TX) were defeated in their reelection bids and even Bachmann barely made it through-- and only because Steve Israel of the DCCC decided to not target her. In the Senate races, all the key Tea Party candidates-- Todd Akin (MO), Richard Mourdock (IN), Connie Mack (FL), Kurt Bills (MN), George Allen (VA), Josh Mandel (OH), Tom Smith (PA), Charles Summers (ME), Joe Kyrillos (NJ) and Linda McMahon (CT)-- were badly beaten. In fact, in every race where the Tea Party forced the GOP to pick a more extreme right candidate instead of a more mainstream conservative, the Republicans lost. Not that that will stop them from trying the same stunt again. They should look closely at how the extreme right lunatic they forced on Orlando Republicans, Todd Long, gave Alan Grayson the biggest congressional comeback landslide in contemporary electoral history; but they won't.

The tea-party movement is trying to regroup after taking some licks in this month’s elections. Several groups already are setting their sights on 2014 congressional races, in which they plan to promote their preferred candidates and hope to weed out Republicans they consider insufficiently conservative.

...Conservative groups also are considering potential challenges to GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Lamar Alexander in Tennessee and Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, whom some activists view as not conservative enough.

Although none of the 3 are known members of the Nazi Party, all are considered extremely right-wing, Chambliss may have angered the lunatic fringe this week by disavowing his Grover Norquist pledge on a Georgia TV station. Chambliss, whose career-long ProgressivePunch score is a shocking 2.04-- even more far right than secessionist freak shows Jim DeMint (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS) or Jeff Sessions (KKK-AL) or Tea Party darlings Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT)-- says he knows Norquist and the teabaggers will come after him in 2014 with a primary challenge from an outright John Bircher like Paul Broun but is confident he made the right decision.

“I don't worry about that because I care too much about my country. I care a lot more about it than I do Grover Norquist,” said Chambliss.

“I'm willing to do the right thing and let the political consequences take care of themselves,” the Georgia senator added.

This is the perfect scenario for a replication of what happened in Indiana, where a weak reactionary Blue Dog, Joe Donnelly, had virtually no chance to be reelected to his House seat, threw a Hail Mary pass by running for Senate against Richard Lugar, only to bee the teabaggers defeat Lugar and replace him with the unelectable Mourdock. In Georgia an even more reactionary and even weaker Blue Dog, John Barrow, will be facing certain defeat in the House in 2014 and has been making noises about running against Chambliss. He'd have no chance against Chambliss but against someone as over the cliff as Broun or potential primary challenger Karen Handel ... Stranger things have happened.

As for Lamar Alexander, he has an even more right-wing voting record than Chambliss (1.92) and is even more popular in his homestate. And even Lindsey Graham's score (5.17) is hard to describe as anything but "right-wing extreme," falling halfway between Rand Paul (6.25) and David Vitter (4.61). The teabaggers will have a rough time making a case than any of these senators aren't right-wing enough-- not that anything like that would even begin to stop them.

They'll have mighty slim pickings in the House, where almost all the moderate Republicans are long gone. Walter Jones (R-NC) might be vulnerable in a primary but that would hand the district over to a Democrat-- same goes for Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Fred Upton (R-MI), Tom Petri (R-WI), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) or Peter King (R-NY). But I'd love to see them try. I'll even help them!

Meanwhile, Norquist has already struck back at Chambliss for abandoning The Pledge: "Senator Chambliss promised the people of Georgia he would go to Washington and reform government rather than raise taxes to pay for bigger government. He made that commitment in writing to the people of Georgia. If he plans to vote for higher taxes to pay for Obama-sized government he should address the people of Georgia and let them know that he plans to break his promise to them. Sen. Chambliss mentions his fear of losing a primary if he breaks his word to Georgians and votes to raise their taxes,. History reminds us that when President George H.W. Bush raised taxes in a deal that promised (and did not deliver) spending cuts he was defeated not in the primary, but in the general.”