The Tea Party Won Its Final Victory Last Night

 

The victory of Thom Tillis in the Republican Senate primary in North Carolina last night is sure to prompt a lot of pieces about the death of the tea party. The establishment guy won! The tea party loon got whomped! The adults are back in charge. But Ed Kilgore gets it right:

For one thing, the “Establishment” did not have a great night in House races in NC. But even if all you do is to focus on Tillis’ win, it came at the sort of price that I suspect “Establishment” candidates are going to be willing to pay all over the country this year: abject surrender to party extremists on every key issues.

As it stands, Thom Tillis will be entering the general election campaign against Kay Hagan having proudly and redundantly branded himself as a “conservative revolutionary” leading battles against education funding and abortion rights and voting rights in a state that is ambivalent at best about its shiny new right-wing government. And if there were any doubts about perceptions of Tillis, I’d say publicity about the 2011 “divide and conquer” video will take care of them eventually. Any “move to the center” by Tillis will be very, very difficult.

The tea party basically took over the GOP four years ago. Sure, there are still candidates who are more or less conservative than others, but even the “establishment” candidates these days are creatures of the tea party. As Dave Weigel says, there’s really not much contest left. The tea party has already won:

In 2014, the biggest target of the year so far was Thom Tillis, the leader of the ultra-conservative North Carolina legislature, which was elected with the help of Americans for Prosperity’s Art Pope — who, following the 2012 elections, is now the state’s budget director. The “Tea Party,” as seen in the movement’s best-funded national organization, had already won in North Carolina and made it a test kitchen for ALEC model legislation. Where, as I asked last week, was the space to the right? There wasn’t any. This is why Democrats, who quietly gave up hope of a Republican runoff over the last week, have been trying to remind people that Tillis is perfectly right-wing.

If Tillis is the best example you can find of an “establishment” candidate, then the conservative establishment is well and truly toast. These days, the tea party is triumphant everywhere. The only thing that’s changed is its name. It’s now called the Republican Party.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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