June 2014 - When William F. Buckley was trying to build an intellectual conservative movement back in the 1950s and 1960s, one of his biggest challenges was trying to keep the far right fringe from undermining what he was trying to accomplish. For some reason the far right seems to attract many more of the bizarre, the closed-minded, and the conspiracy believers than the far left. If Buckley were alive today, he would have to look no further than the so-called Tea Party movement to find the same types of people he was most worried about fifty years ago.

With the Tea Party bringing in lots of money (reportedly most of it having been funded by the billionaire Koch brothers) and being actively promoted by many right-wing talk radio hosts and Fox talking heads, some Americans were actually starting to think the Tea Party was a serious movement. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Tea Partiers keep showing their true colors.

Take the recent Tea Party adventures in Mississippi. Conservative Republican Senator Thad Cochran is up for re-election this year and, despite a solid conservative voting record, apparently he's not conservative enough for the Mississippi Tea Party. So they decided to run a candidate named Chris McDaniel against Cochran in the Republican primary which, after initial voting, will be decided in a June 24th run-off election. {June 25th update: Cochran narrowly defeated McDaniel in the run-off.}

Cochran is in his seventies and, unfortunately, his wife is institutionalized with dementia. Last month, four of McDaniel's supporters, including one Tea Party official, were arrested following an attempt to break into Mrs. Cochran's nursing care facility. Their goal was to take photographs of her to use in political commercials. While that kind of behavior is despicable and hard to believe, it does seem to be the mentality of far too many of the people who are drawn to the angry anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party.

{July updates: McDaniel isn't going quietly. He and his Tea Party supporters are raising numerous conspiracy theories regarding the run-off voting and many want to challenge the results in court. Which doesn't surprise us in the least. While the far right is always quick to disparage any Democrat who questions the results of the Bush-Gore presidential election in 2000, we've always felt that, if the shoe was on the other foot, the conservatives would be even more vocal than Gore and his supporters have been. McDaniel's and the Tea Party's reaction to the Mississippi run-off proves our point.)

But the fun in Mississippi doesn't end there. The night before the original Republican primary, three McDaniel supporters found themselves locked in the Hinds County Courthouse at 2am in the morning and had to call for help to get out. No clear explanations were given as to how, when, or why they got into the building, although no criminal charges initially were filed

One of these three folks, Janis Lane, a Central Mississippi Tea Party official, made news back in 2012 as well. In an interview reported in the Jackson Free Press, Lane questioned whether women should have been given the right to vote and then went on to blast the behavior of women in the work place. Was she implying that women shouldn't be in the workforce either?

No, we're not making any of this up. And while this type of behavior and way of thinking still may come as a surprise to many Americans, it probably wouldn't be a surprise at all to William F. Buckley.

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