Alabama - A Test Case of Whether the Tea Party Can Be Killed

It's ironic that business interest within the GOP could not see the monster they were allowing to be created when the Christofascists and later the Tea Party (which mostly Christofascists hiding behind a different moniker) were allowed to infiltrate the GOP base.  Now that the cancer of these people is causing the GOP to suffer metastasizing cancer like symptoms, the GOP business community has seemingly finally begun to wake up and try to reclaim the GOP from the crazy people.  Will it work?  Only time will tell.  A piece in the New York Times looks at a struggle in my old home town of Mobile, Alabama, to stop a lunatic Tea Party candidate.  Note how the bulk of the Tea Party supporters are far right Christians.  Here are story excerpts:

With only days to go before a special Republican primary runoff for Congress here in South Alabama, the national business lobby is going all in. 

In the first test of its post-government-shutdown effort to derail Tea Party candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put on a rally on Tuesday in the warehouse of an aluminum plant to show its support for Bradley Byrne, a lawyer and former Republican officeholder. 

Companies as diverse as Caterpillar and AT&T have also sent in a last-minute flurry of donations. The goal, backers of Mr. Byrne said, is to elect not just a Republican, but the right kind of pro-business one. 

Dean Young, the Tea Party-backed businessman who is running against Mr. Byrne, seems only to be reveling in his opponent’s establishment, big-money support, repeatedly praising Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for leading the way to the government shutdown and saying that if he wins it will be in the face of “the entire Republican establishment.” 

Republican consultants and voters here say that the zeal of Mr. Young’s Christian conservative supporters puts the outcome of the runoff at even odds, suggesting that the fight over control of the Republican Party is likely to be long, hard and unpredictable. 

It is a reality that has some of the Washington lobbyists and political consultants who are helping orchestrate the anti-Tea Party push concerned, particularly given that extreme conservatives tend to be more reliable voters. 

Mr. Young’s voters are drawn by his declaration that homosexuality “always has been, always will be” wrong, his full backing of using a government shutdown “to stop Obamacare,” and his insistence that people “have the right to acknowledge God in schools and in the public square.”

Supporters of moderate Republican candidates worry about whose voters will turn out.

They [business interests] are increasingly concerned that a core group of anti-establishment conservatives in the House is threatening to derail their agenda, not just in terms of keeping the government open for business, but also when it comes to passing a comprehensive new immigration law, revising the nation’s tax code and making changes to the health care law, instead of just trying to kill it. 

Rob Engstrom, the chamber’s national political director, explained this strategy on Tuesday, when he flew in to endorse Mr. Byrne, standing on a stage next to him at the warehouse in Foley. 

“The No. 1 goal of the U.S. Chamber’s political program is to protect the pro-business majority in the House of Representatives,” Mr. Engstrom said to the crowd. “In addition to protecting that majority, we are also very interested in what is the composition of that majority. We want to find candidates who come from the private sector, we want to find candidates who come from the chamber family.” 

Recent elections in Alabama have proved that politicians with a strong Christian conservative following can win big races, even when significantly outraised. Aware of this, some in the Byrne camp have quietly reached out to Democrats, hoping to attract non-Republicans to the polls. But it is unclear whether that will happen, or would be enough.  

As the Christofascists have risen in power in the Alabama GOP, the state has become crazier and crazier.   Indeed, in some ways Alamaba was more moderate during George Wallace last term as governor than it is now.  That's pretty scary.