The Republican's Big Tent

I think that David Neiwert's take on the movement of right wing wackos out of their compounds and into the mainstream of American politics tells the story of today's Republican Party better than any other political analysis.

What was most disturbing was, even in 2000, the way the mainstream conservative agenda was beginning to resemble the politics of longtime racists like David Duke and Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations leader: bashing welfare recipients, attacking affirmative action, complaining about "reverse discrimination," calling for the elimination of immigrants. Since then, this trend has only accelerated, to the point that old-fashioned haters like Duke and the National Alliance are finding their ranks thinned by followers who just become Republicans.

So the racist right and the radical religious right (often the same people) found a home and it wasn't in some isolated compound in Idaho or Montana. It was at the Republican National Convention.