Is There Such A Thing As Too Extreme On The Right-- Or Does It Always Have To End In An Orgy Of Blood?

If you want to find out which Senate Republicans have the most reactionary and extreme right voting records, you can access that information at ProgressivePunch. You just scroll down past the most conservative Democrats-- like Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin, Mark Warner and Mark Pryor-- and past then garden variety conservative Republicans who are getting primaries by teabaggers, like Susan Collins, Lamar Alexander, Thad Cochran and Lindsey Graham, and you get to a land of make-believe. Past right-wing sociopaths like Ron Johnson, Richard Burr, Marco Rubio, Richard Shelby, you find the 17 GOP Senators with "perfect" scores for 2013-- zero. None of the 17 extremists voted for anything that could be viewed as progressive. The gerbil caucus or lemming caucus or whatever you call it. Isn't just Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Tim Scott (R-SC), Deb Fischer (R-NE), John Boozman (R-AR) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). Oh, no. Joining them in the ranks of zeroes are radical right lunatics who would rather see America suffer than go against their narrow ideological and partisan predispositions. Just what the Tea Party is looking for, right? I mean, you can't get more radical than a zero voting record… like Ted Cruz, right? Well, aside from zero voting records, what do these 4 Republicans all have in common?

• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)

Of course, they are all being viciously challenging for reelection this cycle… from the right. How you get to the right of zero without committing crimes against humanity is something we may learn over the next few months. The twitter attacks against that notorious "liberal," John Cornyn by a former speed freak and street person who has been implicated in the Oklahoma City domestic terror bombing, Steve Stockman, is the most aggressive assault on a sitting senator I have ever seen. People constantly ask if his verified official twitter feed is a hoax or a parody by some liberal jokester.

A few days ago, one of the most radical right iof the crackpot Republican front groups, the Madison Project, led by a neo-fascist ex-Congressman from Kansas, Jim Ryun, endorsed a teabagger running against another zero-- Pat Roberts. They're joining Jim DeMint's old PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, in a jihad against Roberts. This is Pat Robert's voting record broken down by issue. How do you get more deranged and out of touch with reality than that? Ryun thinks they found the fringe loon who can do it-- a distant cousin of President Obama, presumably not from the Kenyan side of the family. Milton Wolf's complaint about Roberts is that he's a career politician and that Roberts is against Obamacare but not loudly enough.

A far right blogger from Georgia also endorsed Wolf against Roberts. He explained it in a post on Wednesday. Is his world, everything is divided between the allies and enemies of Ted Cruz, who American neo-Nazis worship as some kind of reincarnation of their fuehrer.

In the past six months, Senator Pat Roberts has been a rock ribbed, small government conservative. He has stood with Ted Cruz. He has fought the fight. He’s done in the sixth year of his term everything conservatives have wanted. And that’s pretty unusual because in the last five years Pat Roberts has stood with his leadership even against conservatives.

We have seen this before. Orrin Hatch, bless his heart, went through 2012 pounding his chest and throwing red meat to the crowd. To heck with plans for amnesty, said Hatch. Shut down the government if that’s what it takes to stop Obamacare, campaigned Hatch. No more debt increases, no more spending, no more big government-- Hatch was a reformed and repentant Senator.

Conservatives decided they could forgive him the prior five years of his record and his kissy face with Ted Kennedy. They re-elected him.

He immediately went back to amnesty. He gave up fighting Obamacare. He’s cool with raising taxes in the Murray-Ryan budget plan. He’s okay with growing government. Secure with another six year term unaccountable to voters, Hatch went back to his old ways.

Conservatives need to stop being played the fool by incumbent Senators who find religion in their election year. We can do better in Kansas. We can support Dr. Milton Wolf.

Dr. Wolf, a cousin to Barack Obama, has consistently been a conservative. I don’t worry that he will somehow turn wobbly in office. Dr. Wolf understands that an ‘R’ is not enough and, as he wrote yesterday, “The letter “R” did not save America.” It takes more than that. It takes principle and it takes conviction.

We can move Kansas to the right of Pat Roberts and we can do so with Dr. Milton Wolf in the United States Senate. I’m proud to support him and look forward to sending Ted Cruz reinforcements.

It was this kind of thinking that got another zero-- Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss-- to decide to call it quits after his term ends next year. There's some chance that that will lead to the election of a moderate Democrat, Michelle Nunn, is a dependably red state. The far right's skewering of McConnell will help exactly one candidate-- and it's not Matt Bevin-- Alison Lundergan Grimes. It's a shame the DSCC is so badly led that they didn't both recruiting a plausible candidate just in case Republican primary voters decide to go over the cliff with Steve Stockman.