Gore among the Palmettos

Palmetto Public Record's reporting that Senator Lindsey Graham may be in a spot of bother:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made a revealing comment about the future of the GOP last month, when he told the Washington Post that Republicans aren’t “generating enough angry white guys” for the party to survive in the long term.

Graham correctly said the GOP is “losing badly” on the demographic front, with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney beating President Barack Obama only among white males. With minority groups migrating to the Democratic Party in droves, Republicans’ ability to forge majority electoral coalitions is looking increasingly unlikely — a trend that doesn’t look to reverse itself anytime soon.

South Carolina’s senior senator has long advocated for a “big tent” Republican Party which caters to the interests of black guys, brown guys, and maybe even women! So naturally, you can see why the tea party wing of the GOP wants Graham out of office as soon as possible.

In fact, the conservative Club For Growth has already announced its intention to challenge Graham in the 2014 primary. The group of angry white guys is known for cannibalizing fellow Republicans whom it thinks aren’t conservative enough, making Graham a prime target in two years.

“If you’re looking to the horizon of 2014, the sun may rise over South Carolina,” Club For Growth president Chris Chocola told reporters last week.

In fact, Graham has been concerned about the demographics of Right-Wing Elephantiasis for some time. Not only did he mention it to WaPo at the Tampa Laff Riot, he talked about it in October 2009. As Waldo reported at the time, Graham said "We're not going to be the party of angry white guys," to a roomful of angry white guys.

So it seems unlikely that comment a few weeks ago has anything to do with any Astroturf challenge to Graham in 2014. He has had a target on his back for years. The Republican Party's Teabaggers are, like all ideologues, driven by the urge to purge. They roil across the landscape, filled with bile and rage, and they take it out on each other as they strive, individually, to prove how much more pure of thought and narrow of mind they can be than the next one. Edmund Burke's Reflections On The Revolution In France offers some useful examples of how this phenomenon works. 

As Waldo has also remarked before, The GOP is where the UK Labour party was in the early 1980s under Michael Foot. One of the last of the unreconstructed lefties of the Ramsay MacDonald era, (he and his brothers became known as the Three Left Feet) Foot argued, in the 1983 party manifesto that became known as the longest suicide note in history, that Labour wasn't too left-wing. It wasn't left-wing enough. Mrs. Thatcher put paid to that notion.

Now we see the Right in America headed down the same folly-filled path. The Club for Growth has its partisans seeded throughout the SC Uniparty, ready to strike.

Let the knives be drawn, the the fun begin.