MY HOME STATE POISED TO SEND REACTIONARY NUT TO DC

From AlterNet:

Tea Party's Cruz Vanquishes GOP Pick for U.S. Senate in Texas Run-off

Texas is a big, important state in Right-Wing-World, and it's the land from whence Armey hails. No way was Perry going to be allowed to make some namby-pamby G.O.P. establishment pick for U.S. Senate, for God's sake -- not when Armey has laid claim to the U.S. Senate as his own little electoral playground, where he's hard at work, as FreedomWorks spokesperson Adam Brandon once told me, building "a power center around Jim DeMint," the senator from South Carolina. Since the Rand Paul coup in Kentucky, the DeMint cabal has essentially set the Republican agenda -- and, through strong-arm use of the arcane rules of the deliberative body, that of the entire Senate.

Just imagine what DeMint will do with even more like him in the Senate.

As Cruz showed strength going into the run-off, big-name Tea Party and religious-right favorites, including Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum, signed on to his campaign with endorsements.

More here.

On the one hand, I'm kind of bummed that the Republicans in Texas have moved even further to the right. On the other hand, this was just the primary, and it might be that the Lone Star State has been pushed far enough. Perhaps, if Cruz's Democratic opponent plays it mainstream, this Tea Party psycho will lose, ushering in the inevitable demographic shift that will move Texas from red to purple, a true swing state, chock full of a new majority-minority of Mexican-Americans who fully understand that the GOP only wants them to work the fields and make their beds. Or maybe not. I mean, this shift is definitely going to happen, but we just don't yet know when.

But this I do know: the conservatives, riding self-righteous indignation and anger, have successfully pulled the US political establishment very far to the right in recent decades, so far, in fact, that they have no one left as targets for their anger and bile. Except, of course, themselves. And for the moment, that's all very satisfying.

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