A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found that 71% of Republicans are Tea Party supporters, which should come as no surprise. The Tea Party “movement” has been largely an astroturf operation from the very beginning, a way to legitimize the far right of the GOP. And it’s worked, as you can see from the current crop of GOP candidates.

The mainstream Republican Party is out of ideas and stuck on stupid, and into this gap the extremists have ridden: the John Birch Society, fundamentalist religious groups of all kinds, Ron Paul and his legions of weird followers, Alex Jones, etc. They’ve been there all along, but now they’re in their heyday, dictating their throwback ideas to an enervated Republican Party that has no leaders with the moral courage to stand up to them.

The tea party has emerged as a potent force in American politics and a center of gravity within the Republican Party, with a large majority of Republicans showing an affinity for the movement that has repeatedly bucked the GOP leadership this year, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

In the survey, 71% of Republicans described themselves as tea-party supporters, saying they had a favorable image of the movement or hoped tea- party candidates would do well in the Nov. 2 elections.