Once A Fool, Thrice A Teabagger

The Count of Charlie Crist isn't the only Hoffman Effect primary out there this year, where a hard-right whackjob is forcing the GOP "moderate" into being yet another hard-right whackjob to sate the taste GOP primary voters have for "liberal heretic RINO blood."  No matter who wins the primary, the general election will certainly strongly favor the Democrat in the race as a result.

Christina Bellantoni of TPMDC shows us three more races along these lines.

We've been tracking the race in VA-05, where seven Republican candidates are lining up in hopes of challenging top target Rep. Tom Perriello (D).

In the latest development there, Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher of 2008 presidential campaign fame is endorsing Laurence Verga.

Wurzelbacher called Verga "a true American that truly understands the importance of the Constitution, and will follow it." They will campaign together this weekend.

As we have reported, Verga also was lauded by conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham.

(More after the jump...)

In AL-02, Rick Barber announced his candidacy in the Republican primary, challenging the NRCC candidate Martha Roby.

Barber, who calls himself a "conservative Tea Party Patriot," also announced he has hired Yates Walker, who served as a regional director of the Hoffman campaign in NY-23.

"There are a lot of parallels between Doug Hoffman and Rick Barber," Walker said in a release put out by the Barber campaign. "We need more representatives who believe in free market principles and understand balance sheets."

In PA-06, the race is heating up to replace Rep. Jim Gerlach (R), who is retiring to run for governor.

A TPM reader tipped us off to the fight between NRCC favorite Steve Welch and state Rep. Curt Schroder, a conservative.

Welch, like the establishment candidate in VA-05 Robert Hurt, just signed the Grover Norquist Americans for Tax Reform pledge against backing tax increases.

And a bunch more of these races will be shaping up over the next few months.  The further these goofballs swing to the right, the more the swing voters in the middle will realize that giving the Republicans back the reins or power isn't going to fix anything, and will certainly make things far worse.

Any race where the candidate thinks Joe The Plumber is going to help them is one worth laughing at...and voting against in November.  As BooMan said yesterday:

The Democrats have ten months to improve the mood of the electorate, but the window on candidate retention and recruitment is rapidly closing. And the Democrats need to put more Republicans on the defensive. The filing date closed for federal offices in Texas yesterday and the Democrats left seven Republican-held house seats uncontested. That is no good. If the mood of the country is indeed more anti-incumbent than anti-Democratic (and the polls definitely indicate that that is the case) then the Democrats need to be more aggressive in fielding long-shot candidates. We should not be seeing things like this.

It's probably spitting against the wind, but progressives need to get their heads out of their asses and recognize that we're at real risk of seeing Obama's third and fourth year get hijacked and put at the mercy of a U.S. Senate where we have less than sixty votes and a U.S. House where we have only a nominal majority. And the Obama administration needs to stop dicking around and start giving the progressive base some things to celebrate and motivate them for the field work that needs to be done. But, most of all, DSCC chair Bob Menendez and DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen need to expand the field and get aggressive. Playing strictly defense in this atmosphere is a terrible idea.

And the Hoffman Effect will make some GOP candidates as vulnerable as the incumbents they are trying to replace.