“A new group called the National Precinct Alliance says it has a coordinator in nearly every state to recruit Tea Party activists to fill the positions and has already swelled the number of like-minded members in Republican Party committees in Arizona and Nevada. Its mantra is this: take the precinct, take the state, take the party — and force it to nominate conservatives rather than people they see as liberals in Republican clothing…

“‘If you want to have revenge against the Republican Party for using you for so many years, the best way is to turn around and use the Republican Party to your advantage,’ said Eric Odom, a Tea Party activist in Chicago who recently started a political action committee, and on his blog urged Tea Partiers to stop complaining about the Republican Party and ‘move in and take it over.'”

***
“‘I came here to tell the people of Massachusetts this: This country’s revolution was born in Massachusetts. The Revolutionary War was first won here. The war was over here years before it was finally finished. It started with the Boston Tea Party, and the right wing Republicans have appropriated that on the premise the tea party was against government.’

“Clinton added, ‘What they were against was abuse of power.'”

***
“It makes perfect sense that Scott Brown, a liberal Massachusetts Republican, has attracted Republican and conservative support. He’s perfectly suited for his liberal state electorate. Dede Scozzafava, in fact considerably more conservative than Scott Brown was not nearly so well matched to her intended constituency, the relatively conservative 23rd District that had returned moderate conservative John McHugh since the 1992 election.

“What this shows, however, is that the conservative base in the United States, far from dragging their party moblike into an unelectable extreme, has made the decentralized decision to support the realistically best candidate they can relative to the context in which he’s being elected. The 23rd special district election can also be seen in this light; throwing Scozzafava overboard made far more sense in the context of that electorate.”

***
“The Scott Brown who may rescue the country from Obamacare is not a talk radio conservative.

“Strong on defense and school choice, opposed to the Obama administration’s signature initiatives, Brown voted in favor of Mitt Romney’s health plan in Massachusetts. He describes himself as pro-choice (subject to reasonable limitations), accepts gay marriage in Massachusetts as a settled fact, and told the Boston Herald editorial board he would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor. He calls himself ‘fiscally conservative and socially conscious.’ He’s got an environmental record too: In the state senate he voted in favor of a regional initiative to curb greenhouse gas initiatives…

“It would be a travesty if Brown’s victory is seized upon as a victory for anger, paranoia, and ideological extremism.”