Have we passed peak wingnut? Are the Tea Party and its Bircher/racist allies headed for the dustbin of history?
Could be.
There’s a long history of similar emotion and conspiracy driven movements disintegrating with startling speed when a few critical cracks start to appear. A prime example would be the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, which went from several million members to a few thousand in the space of two years. This happened after a woman was raped and murdered by a Klan leader in Indiana. More recently, and on a truly gigantic scale, the precipitous collapse of international communism caught everyone by surprise in 1989.
The Tea Party has repeatedly revealed its essential disloyalty and destructiveness in recent weeks. They have overstepped the law and the courts are stepping in. Banana republic gerrymandering notwithstanding, the ‘baggers may be headed for an ass whipping of biblical dimensions in next year’s elections.