In an RCJ article on Bill Napoli's West River Wingnut insurgency, the esteemed Professor Jon Schaff gets us wondering just what RINOs the hard right is hunting:
Schaff added that it was difficult to make the case that South Dakota's Republican Party had shifted to the left.
Analysis of party voting records by political scientists, particularly Kieth Poole of the University of Georgia and Howard Rosenthal of New York University, show that nationally the party is the most conservative it's been in a century.
South Dakota's legislature and congressional delegation — which is dominated by Republicans — is generally considered to be in line with that trend [Daniel Simmons-Ritchie, "Wingnuts Pledge to Push Republican Party Further Right," Rapid City Journal, 2014.05.11].
Schaff reminds us that we shouldn't be fooled by rhetoric from folks like Napoli, Gordon Howie, and Stace Nelson who call Mike Rounds, Dennis Daugaard, and other leading Republicans "moderates" and "Democrats." Such statements create the false impression that South Dakota is controlled by liberal politicians, which we liberals know to be hogwash.
Schaff says the GOP's rightward shift was brought to us by Reagan-Jesus people:
Schaff compared it to the transformation of the Republican Party nationwide during the 1980s. In that period, fundamentalist Christians organized to overthrow the so-called "country club" Republicans that dominated the party [Simmons-Ritchie, 2014.05.11].
That's funny: if the country club Republicans were overthrown, it seems like the overthrowers must have all signed up for their own memberships in the country club. I'd like to believe conservatives like Napoli could be allies in the fight against the crony capitalism that brought us the EB-5 scandal, but maybe a Wingnut win just brings us a new crop of Bendas, Bollens, and Roundses.