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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:

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Keith Olbermann talked to The Washington Post's Dave Weigel about the significance of Bob Bennett's defeat in Utah.

How the Club for Growth beat Bob Bennett:

The free-market PAC's spokesman, Mike Connolly, explains all to David Catanese. The rundown:

-- The Club for Growth spent only $177,750 against Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), "largely on phone calls to delegates, online strategy, mailings and robo-calls."

-- The pivotal moment for Bennett, as many strategists told me, was the election of a new crop of conservative activists in the March 23 caucuses. Those activists, many coming out of the tea party movement, held Bennett's fate in their hands. And he never had a chance at the convention.

It emphasizes that as exciting as this story was, it's simply not repeatable in other states -- Utah's empowerment of the most dedicated activists, which lets them shrink the primary field to their two preferred candidates, is unprecedented.

Keith asked Dave Weigel if electing these tea party candidates is going to be beneficial to the Democrats.

Weigel: Well, they do celebrate whenever this happens. They’ll have a better shot at a couple of Senate seats, a couple of House seats if tea partiers nominate somebody who can’t win. In this case Utah’s a very tough nut to crack. They’ve got a candidate but they’re not optimistic. But in Arizona if J.D. Hayworth beats John McCain they’ve got a Phoenix city councilman who they think could win there.

Charlie Crist if he ends up winning that three way race or if Kendrick Meek wins in Florida that’s better than they could have had in a two way race. They actually had a bad situation this weekend in Hawaii where there’s an intra-Democratic Party feud that cost them a seat. But generally they’re quietly cheering and they’re waiting to unleash a lot of opposition research once these nominees are well chosen. Utah not so much, other states like South Dakota, Ohio, not Ohio yet, other states they’re hoping that tea party candidates make these challenges.

Keith also asked him if some of them getting elected are going to hurt the Republican Party since it's going to show them to be extremists. Weigel expressed something along the lines of my feelings about Republicans. If the crazies like Michele Bachmann haven't already hurt the party, a few more of these wingnuts isn't going to matter much with the electorate as pissed off as they are now at politicians in general.

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Despite the Club for Growth, Dick Armey and Sarah Palin's involvement in New York's 23rd District Congressional race resulting in Democrat Bill Owens being elected, Fox News Sunday makes The Club for Growth's Chris Chocola their "Power Player of the Week". Yeah, the power to drag the Republican Party even further to the right. Wallace touts that as a good thing for the party.

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When asked by CNN's John King about the Republican Party in-fighting in the NY-23 race and if the party can survive in the Northeast region of the country if there is no room for moderates in their ranks, John Boehner tries to blame the “rebellion” going on now on “people who really have not been actively involved in the political process”. Oh really?

While that may be true of those out protesting, it’s certainly not true of the ones organizing them. Dick Armey and Tim Phillips are hardly people that could be called “not active in the political process”. Quite the opposite. And Sarah Palin who has interjected herself into that race was the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee the last election.

John Boehner has a bigger mess on his hands than he’s willing to admit which is evident by his response at the end of the segment when he says this:

KING: Let me ask you, lastly, though, but sometimes does the party need to draw a line?

What's the point of having a party if people in your party will attack your own nominees? I mean, where do you draw that line?

BOEHNER: Listen, I'm a big believer in Ronald Reagan's 11 commandment -- 11th commandment. Never talk ill about another Republican.

KING: That was not followed in this race.

BOEHNER: I know.

Yes and so do the rest of us who have been watching this John.

Transcript below the fold.

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Looks like the Club for Growth/Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party has prevailed in this race. DeDe Scozzafava suspends her campaign:

Dede Scozzafava, the Republican and Independence parties candidate, announced Saturday that she is suspending her campaign for the 23rd Congressional District and releasing all her supporters.

The state Assemblywoman has not thrown her support to either Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, or Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate.

"Today, I again seek to act for the good of our community," Ms. Scozzafava wrote in a letter to friends and supporters. "It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support. Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit to do so. I am and have always been a proud Republican. It is my hope that with my actions today, my party will emerge stronger and our district and our nation can take an important step towards restoring the enduring strength and economic prosperity that has defined us for generations."

Ms. Scozzafava told the Watertown Daily Times that Siena Research Institute poll numbers show her too far behind to catch up - and she lacks enough money to spend on advertising in the last three days to make a difference. Mr. Owens has support from 36 percent of likely voters in the poll, with Mr. Hoffman garnering 35 percent support. Ms. Scozzafava has support from 20 percent of those polled.

The Gouverneur resident said she thinks she will receive more than 20 percent of the vote, based on several factors, including her performance during a Thursday debate.

See the Watertown Daily Times' "All Politics is Local" blog to read Ms. Scozzafava's complete statement or for more information on today's Siena poll.

So what happens when a moderate Republican (Dede Scozzafava) gets bushwhacked from the far right in her quest to win a seat in congress, in what would normally be in a district where the prospects were pretty good she'd win? First, her finances dry up; right-wing Club for Growth starts running ads for her Conservative opponent while she can't run any due to lack of money; she gets attacked by Dick Armey (albeit Newt Gingrich tried to come to her rescue); The Weekly Standard starts running snide things about her campaign so her campaign manager flips out and calls the cops on him.

And then this.

In what can only be described, charitably, as a severe lapse in judgment or common sense, a protest news conference staged in front of her Conservative opponent's headquarters goes awry. And the resulting optics were less than stellar. Scozzafava's pained expression probably came at the exact moment she realized she would be seen standing in front of a wall of signs for her opponent on the local evening news.

Somewhere Democrat Bill Owens and his campaign are chuckling at the continuing travails of the Republicans in upstate New York, and perhaps even the oncoming civil war within the national Republican party itself.

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Rachel Maddow weighed in on the race on her show last night.

Maddow: Common political wisdom is that the first round of elections in the new president‘s first year are a referendum on that president. This year‘s bellwether looks a lot more like a referendum on the state of the Republican Party. And at this point, Democrats rejoice. It‘s a cage match.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Lincoln Chafee about the Club for Growth and other conservative groups pouring money into the Republican primary process and demanding "purity" from their candidates on right wing conservative issues, and then that candidate going on to lose a general election. Rachel asks whether that strategy is going to mean the end of the Republican party or a possible formation of a third party. Chafee does not see the party changing and feels they're not going to remain a viable national party.