http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/14/AR2010051402450.html
GOP's Utah and Maine conventions show a party coming unglued
By Dana Milbank
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Future historians tracing the crackup of the Republican Party may well look to
May 8, 2010, as an inflection point.
That was the day, as is now well known, that Sen. Robert Bennett, who took the
conservative position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not
conservative enough by fellow Utah Republicans and booted out of the primary.
<snip>
"Social and ecological justice and all of this bullcrap," Beck told his
viewers, "is man's work for a global government." Beck -- who is second in
popularity only to Sarah Palin among the type of Tea Party activists who
hijacked the Maine GOP -- tossed out phrases such as "global standards" and
"global bank tax" -- all part of a conspiracy by the "global government
people." He further provided the news that "Jesus doesn't want a cap-and-trade
system."
<snip>
On Tuesday, USA Today had the headline "Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since
1950" (the nonpartisan Tax Foundation put it at 1959); Beck skipped that,
instead saying he doesn't want changes to the Internet "at least until people
aren't worshipping Satan, you know, in office." (Beck maintained later that he
really wasn't "saying that Obama was a Satan worshipper.")
<snip>
In the Alabama gubernatorial race, a conservative attack ad charged that a
Republican gubernatorial candidate "recently said the Bible is only partially
true." The outraged candidate reaffirmed his "belief that this world and
everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God."
In Utah, just a couple of days after Bennett's fall, conservative Rep. Jason
Chaffetz talked about trying to topple none other than Sen. Orrin Hatch (89
percent lifetime conservative rating) in 2012.
In Arizona, Sen. John McCain, who once said a fence is the "least effective"
way to secure the border, continued his fight against a conservative primary
challenge by releasing an ad demanding, "Complete the danged fence."
