McConnell’s Tea Party nightmare: He can’t kill them — because they run his party

[DonViejo]

The embattled GOP leader says he’s going to vanquish the wingnuts, but he can’t. They’re now his party’s mainstream

JOAN WALSH

OK, Sen. Mitch McConnell wasn’t brandishing a rifle at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday in order to shoot Tea Party marauders. The unpopular Senate Minority Leader was just trying to avoid being booed by the crowd, using the most reliable prop on the far right, a gun (President Obama in handcuffs would probably work well too). But the embattled leader did go ballistic this weekend, figuratively, on his party’s restive far-right activists. The Tea Party is not going to be able to knock off GOP senators in red states, McConnell warned.

“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” McConnell told the New York Times. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”

Not surprisingly, McConnell is starting with his own Tea Party challenger, Matt Bevin. He released a new ad trashing not only Bevin but the Senate Conservatives Fund that’s backing him, charging the group “solicits money under the guise of advocating for conservative principles but then spends it on a $1.4 million luxury townhouse with a wine cellar and hot tub in Washington, D.C.” Wine and hot tubs, you know what that means – these folks are probably just uppity liberal hypocrites in conservative clothing!

But McConnell’s crusade comes a few years too late. Clearly the Tea Party is already the mainstream of his party. Just last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that Republican voters say a candidate’s Tea Party ties make it more likely they’ll support them, by a margin of nearly 2-1. Unfortunately for the GOP, Tea Party affiliation makes the broader electorate less likely to vote for a candidate by about the same margin.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/03/10/mcconnells_tea_party_nightmare_he_cant_kill_them_because_they_run_his_party/

[louis-t]

1. Idn't it funny that mainsteam repugs give power to

Koch bros. then are surprised when they get hit over the head with the tea party?

[blkmusclmachine]

2. ,

,

[AlinPA]

3. The teabaggers are in control of the GOP and are their mainstream now. Their candidates for

U.S. Senate and for president will be chosen from the list of teabagger crazies.