By now it’s con­ven­tional wis­dom that the Repub­li­can Party has moved extremely far to the right. So far, in fact, that Michele Bach­mann (hereto­fore best known for this clip in which she demands that her fel­low con­gress mem­bers be inves­ti­gated for “anti-​​American ideas”) is now, incred­i­bly, a top-​​tier pres­i­den­tial candidate.

The GOP is so far to the right that it is prac­ti­cally meet­ing itself com­ing around the cor­ner, vot­ing against ideas that it once sup­ported, like tax cuts, and even ini­tia­tives Repub­li­cans once spon­sored, sim­ply because they are pro­posed by Democ­rats as pos­si­ble solu­tions to some of the nation’s problems.

Repub­li­cans are so far to the right that a Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent can­not merely be opposed on pol­icy issues, he must be tarred as “non-​​American” and have his cit­i­zen­ship ques­tioned, along with his love of coun­try and the legit­i­macy of his Presidency.

They are so far to the right that they dam­age them­selves by tak­ing impos­si­ble, inflex­i­ble stances on issues such as immi­gra­tion, Social Secu­rity and women’s health that will cost them dearly with key voter blocs in upcom­ing elections.

They are so far to the right that they field une­lec­table peo­ple like Shar­ron Angle, Chris­tine O’Donnell, Joe Miller and Ken Buck, and then rejoice when these can­di­dates lose, because they have made a state­ment about ide­o­log­i­cal purity.

They are so far to the right that, after sweep­ing to a resound­ing vic­tory in the 2010 elec­tions on a plat­form of fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity, they imme­di­ately began pass­ing record num­bers of unpop­u­lar bills in state leg­is­la­tures deal­ing with Sharia law, restric­tions to abor­tion, sup­pres­sion of minor­ity vot­ers and union-​​stripping.

They are so far to the right that some of them have begun openly car­ry­ing guns to polit­i­cal events.

They are so far to the right that, for the first time in Amer­i­can his­tory, they sin­cerely threat­ened to default on the full faith and credit of the United States by refus­ing to renew the debt ceiling.

They are so far to the right that Karl Rove is now warn­ing them of the dan­gers of their new extremism.

8-​​to-​​0 against 10-​​to-​​1

They are so far to the right that, in the debate on August 11th when Repub­li­can pri­mary can­di­dates were asked which of them would oppose a bud­get con­tain­ing a 10-​​to-​​1 ratio of spend­ing cuts to rev­enue increases, all eight on stage raised their hands.

They’re really pretty far to the right.

So, in the dog days of August in this lull between debates, recall elec­tions, straw polls and break­ing news, I want to ask a ques­tion of all the very smart peo­ple in the forum: Why do you think this has happened?

What his­tor­i­cal, polit­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal fac­tors have coa­lesced at this par­tic­u­lar moment that have resulted in the mod­ern Repub­li­can party look­ing like some­thing Richard Nixon (and even Ronald Rea­gan) would hardly have rec­og­nized? Of course we know the Tea Party has been a major fac­tor in yank­ing the whole party to the right. The gen­e­sis of the Tea Party is gen­er­ally con­sid­ered to have been Rick Santelli’s famous rant from the trad­ing floor on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2009, in which he totally lost it while giv­ing vent to his scream­ing out­rage over the idea that his taxes might be used to help pay the mort­gages of poor peo­ple who had over-​​bought in the hous­ing mar­ket. “What we need,” San­telli roared, “is a Chicago Tea Party!”…and a move­ment was born.

But some­thing like the Tea Party doesn’t just mate­ri­al­ize out of thin air. Santelli’s words had to fall on fer­tile, already well-​​tilled ground, or they would never have taken root and spread so quickly. And that’s what I would like the forum to address. What was going on in the pub­lic con­scious­ness that made the Tea Party all but inevitable? Some impor­tant fac­tor (or per­haps a num­ber of them) must have been at work to make con­ser­v­a­tives so uniquely recep­tive to the Tea Party mes­sage, and so eager to embrace an ide­ol­ogy that is more socially and fis­cally extrem­ist than any­thing we’ve seen in recent years.

What do you think those fac­tors were? I have my opin­ion, but I’d like to know what you all think was the major impe­tus in pulling the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment so far to the right that all the things I listed above…events that would have been remark­able in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics just a few years ago…have now become noth­ing more than busi­ness as usual.

Some­thing has caused the S.S. GOP to list so badly to star­board that some seri­ous con­ser­v­a­tives have begun to fear it’s in dan­ger of cap­siz­ing. Let’s try to fig­ure out why this has happened.

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