"Republicans and Fox News are moving to purge the controversial political creatures they created." [View all]

[pampango]

As Dick Morris and Sarah Palin find themselves without a cable-news home, and Karl Rove launches a controversial initiative to keep the most ridiculous Republicans from winning primaries, a subtle pattern seems to be emerging. Indeed, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reported overnight, "Republicans and Fox News are moving to purge the controversial political creatures they created."

It led Jon Chait to raise an excellent point: "In order to purge a party of crankish and bigoted sentiments, you would need to identify what those sentiments are."



Quite right. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for example, is labeled on the new cover of Time magazine as the Republican Party's "savior." It comes a day after his party tapped the young Floridian to give the GOP's response to President Obama's State of the Union address, and against the backdrop of assumptions that Rubio will seek national office at the next available opportunity.

Maybe now would be a good time to note the blurred line between GOP "cranks, haters and bigots" and the rest of the party? Let's use Rubio, the Republican "savior," as an example. Rubio doesn't accept climate science, thinks the age of the planet is a theological question, and opposes marriage equality. Remember the Blunt Amendment that would have empowered employers to deny birth-control coverage to their employers? It was originally known as the "Blunt-Rubio Amendment." Rubio is part of a shrinking fringe that opposes the Violence Against Women Act, embraces strange conspiracy theories involving gun control, and thinks George W. Bush was a "fantastic" president.

On the surface, if Republicans intend to "marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots," that would be a positive development for a radicalized party dominated by extremists. But what happens when the party realizes it doesn't have a moderate wing and it's cranks and rising stars believe in roughly the same far-right ideology?

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/07/16886649-what-the-cranks-haters-and-bigots-believe

If Rubio represents a republican turn towards moderation, they are really screwed.