LA Times, front page, yesterday:
Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP’s broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.
R. Stanton Scott says
How this affects the next few election cycles could depend on the extent to which the paranoid base chooses candidates. If the Glenn Beck wing of the GOP gets their preferences, Dems should be able to move slightly to the right and pick off independent voters.
signsanssignified says
Of course, those same insiders have been all too happy to exploit the madness from Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s to present. Now they see a potential liability so they tut-tut in the hopes that having done so, they & their Frankenstein's monster of a party will be seen as something other than a lunatic asylum by November 4th, 2010. After which point, of course, they'll resume unfettered reliance on the same cranks who've brought their party into such disprepute.