Right wing purists egged on by Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin fought to capture an upstate House seat Monday and electrify their drive to purge moderates from the Republican Party.

With Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman jumping to the lead in a new poll, the hard-core right smelled a chance to remold the GOP in the image of raucous town hall protests and "tea party" rallies of the summer.

"Moderates by definition have no principles," Limbaugh huffed on his radio show yesterday. He predicted that "RINOs" - a putdown acronym of "Republicans In Name Only" - "may become extinct."

Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava quit the race Saturday after relentless attacks by Hoffman backers, who called her too liberal.

www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...publ.html


Many in the GOP, including their presumed leaders, have decided that it is in their best interest to destroy their own in the name of ideological purity. Tim Pawlenty, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, spent his time on “Morning Joe” today trashing fellow Republicans, such as Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), for not measuring up to the ideological litmus test that he believes must be applied to determine who should –and who should not – be members of the Republican Party.

So much for the whole ‘big tent’ thing.

trueslant.com/rickungar/2...e-tea-party/


In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

www.politico.com/news/stor...29057.html


Republicans have managed to become even less popular than they were under President George W. Bush. The party's favorability rating is at its lowest point in the most recent CNN/Opinion Research poll since the Clinton impeachment, with 36 percent of voters expressing positive opinions and 54 percent negative, versus 53 percent positive and 41 percent negative for the Democrats. In an even more historic drop, an anemic 20 percent of American voters identified as Republicans in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, the lowest percentage since 1983. The same poll showed Democrats leading 51 percent to 39 percent in a generic congressional ballot, numbers on par with Democratic blowouts in 2006 and 2008 and in line with a broader trend in the polls toward House Democrats after a brief dip over the summer.

www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...phrenia/


The more the Republican Party sells its intellectual soul to the right-wingers, and the more it listens to those within the closed loop, the better the President's long-term political chances, whatever the ups and downs of today's polls.

www.theglobeandmail.com/news/o...348730/


In this country, you win elections by building coalitions, not purging heretics . . .