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As Digby noted, it seems the Republicans are now trying to kill the Frankenstein monster they created:

Karl Rove was instrumental in creating this monster. Now it's got a mind of its own.

It's hard to know how this will play out. The Tea Party is really just the re-branding of the far right of the Republican Party. But it may just be that the establishment made a mistake in doing that. They don't see themselves as Republicans anymore. They see themselves as a distinct movement that wants to explicitly run the Republican Party.

The wingnuts have always had real power within their Party but they didn't know it. Now they do. And they have spent the last 30 years having people like Karl Rove rev them up and expand their egos into believing they represent a majority of Americans and have a responsibility to hew to their principles no matter what. It was a good way to market conservatism. But it was never true.

Rove, Tea Party in GOP civil war:

As they try to pick up the pieces from last fall’s defeat, the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP are at each other’s throats.

Karl Rove, fresh off the multi-million dollar disaster that was 2012, has launched a new initiative, The New York Times reported Saturday. Known as the Conservative Victory Project, the group, a spin-off of Rove’s American Crossroads, will help recruit establishment Republicans, as well as defend Senate incumbents against challenges from more conservative candidates.

The aim, in a nutshell, is to push back against the Tea Party and bring the GOP’s nominating process back under the control of the party’s Washington power-brokers. In recent cycles, Tea Party-backed Senate candidates have won the Republican nomination over more moderate GOPers, only to be defeated in the general election. In several cases—think of Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks—they’ve been done in thanks in part to campaign trail slip-ups that more seasoned candidates might have avoided.

But the news has triggered a full-blown revolt among conservative activists, both inside and outside Washington. Read on...

And here's more from Steve Benen: Welcoming the Conservative Victory Project to the field:

Continue reading »

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With Rick Santorum out of the Republican primary race and Mitt Romney now the presumptive nominee, Chris Hayes discussed the conventional wisdom that Romney will now inevitably attempt to "pivot" back to the middle and soften some of the very extreme positions he's taken while trying to get through their primary race. Hayes played a series of clips both from President Obama and Romney. He reminded us of some of Obama's broken campaign promises and followed up with some of the things Mitt Romney's said on the campaign trail.

Hayes has a point: it doesn't matter much what Romney says once he attempts to moderate some of the things he's said in those clips because today's Republican Party is not going to allow him to govern as a moderate.

HAYES: The President is a product of the party that nominates him and the party that will nominate Mitt Romney is unwaveringly committed to a singularly regressive agenda. No post election private reversion to the moderate meme will change that. So, as we enter the era of the pivot, don't listen to what Mitt Romney says. Look at what his party is doing.

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While being asked about the Obama administration deciding not to wait until the Republican primary race is over to start going after the remaining presidential candidates, David Axelrod got in a pretty good dig on Mitt Romney's constant claims that he's somehow the one with the experience to manage the economy during his interview on CBS's Face the Nation.

SCHIEFFER: You know it seems like that you all were waiting for the Republicans to pick a nominee before you actually sort of kicked off the-- the general election campaign. But I got the sense last week you were tired of waiting and decided to just go ahead when the President and the vice president went out there and made some pretty strong attacks. Do you have any idea who you think you're going to be running against yet?

AXELROD: No, I don't. And you should address that to your next guest, you know, we thought we'd have a nominee by that-- by now. But, you know, every time it looks like Mister Romney has some momentum he gets setback. He hasn't been able to make the sale to his own party. And, you know, here in Illinois, we have a primary on Tuesday. He's outspending Rick Santorum seven to one and yet the polls are pretty narrow-- narrowly in his favor right now. So I think the Republican Party is having a hard time picking a nominee.

I will say this, Bob. I do watch him parading around the state calling himself an economic heavyweight. And it's the same pitch that he made in 2002 to the people in Massachusetts. And what happened? Massachusetts went from 10th in the nation in job creation to 47th. Their debt went up 16.5 percent. Government jobs grew at six times the rate of private sector jobs. If that makes you-- if he thinks he is an economic heavyweight he must be looking in a fun house mirror because that is not the record of an economic heavyweight.