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The Hill, noted for the record last week:

Nearly half of Republican voters say that ACORN – the community organizing group that closed in 2010 – aided in stealing the 2012 election for President Obama, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The survey, conducted by Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling, found that 49 percent of GOP voters believe that the president did not legitimately win reelection because ACORN interfered with the vote. A full 50 percent of Republicans said Democrats engaged in some sort of voter fraud.

More from Public Policy Polling’s election aftermath polling memo:

Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.

One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we’ve seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%. [Pols emphasis]

“Swastika Guy,” circa February 2009.

Almost from the moment President Barack Obama took office, the opposition to his agenda took on an extreme, overheated sense of urgency on the right. Political rhetoric on the right evoked a sense of desperation trending toward outright rebellion–generally based on false, and often hysterical, predictions of what Obama’s agenda would mean for the country.

This irrational radicalization of the grassroots right wing reached its peak during the passage of health care reform legislation and the 2010 election cycle. The fact is, “Obamacare” as finally passed by Congress and signed into law is a far cry from true left-wing aspirations for health care reform, and has more in common with conservative proposals for reforming health care from the Heritage Foundation (or Mitt Romney) than anything one can legitimately call “socialized medicine.” This resulted in a situation where liberal base Democrats were nonplussed by Obama for “giving away too much,” while the right wing painted Obama as a “communist” unfettered by objective facts about his very much centrist actual policies.

Today, their failure is evident everywhere. The intense four-year campaign to irrationally vilify Obama is bankrupt. Only a declining number of hardcores (see poll) are not aware of this.

But those hardcores aren’t going away. Indeed, they think they define “true conservatism.”

We’re not saying this one poll is gospel, but a drop in Republican self-identification, if it’s corroborated and if it continues, could portend an historic re-alignment–real upheaval in the party, or perhaps even a new party to represent the half of America with ideologically conservative predispositions. Among many Democrats at least, there’s a sense that the GOP is permanently marginalizing itself, hastening an irrelevance for political conservatism that many even on the left would say doesn’t fairly represent the views of our ideologically divided nation.

If that’s what must happen, the question is, how many elections will it take? The answer is almost certainly more than the one we just finished. It’s not going to be pretty. The traditional Republican core of wealthy business interests has always required a coalition with other popular movements to survive, but they chose poorly in subsidizing the “Tea Party”–the latest iteration of the John Birch radical right they used to be much better about keeping at arm’s length.

Like we said last week, Republican elites who would like nothing more than to euthanize the “Tea Party” now that it is no longer useful can’t do so–because as this poll indicates, the irrational grassroots they whipped into a froth in 2010 have a life of their own. This is their base now.

And if it is pushing the GOP out of the American mainstream, nobody is stopping it yet.

Our friend Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post with his latest “Worst Week in Washington.”

The Gadsden flag is flying at half-staff this past week.

The tea party – that plucky insurgent movement that, as recently as two years ago, began trying to reshape the Republican Party and politics more generally – finds itself flailing as 2012 draws to a close, buffeted by infighting, defeats and a broad struggle to find a second act…

The movement needs to decide whether it can survive as an outside force or whether it can become more aligned with the GOP without sacrificing the principles on which it was founded.

As evidence of the “Tea Party’s” dilemma, Cillizza cites the resignation of Sen. Jim DeMint to run the Heritage Foundation, the reported decline of FreedomWorks under allegations of mismanagement, and the loss of committee assignments by certain freshmen members of Congress aligned with the movement. The establishment GOP is, fair to say, over them.

But weren’t they always? Top-down declarations of the “Tea Party’s” demise leave out something important–the fact that the “Tea Party” was never a top-down movement.

Now, it’s true that the “Tea Party” shares, in large part, its origin with the very same Republican strategists in Washington who are now declaring them out of style. Organizations like FreedomWorks provided critical back-end support for budding “Tea Party” and so-called “9.12” groups ahead of their zenith of influence in the 2010 elections. But the fact is, those strategists didn’t create the “Tea Party”–and now that it exists, they can’t kill it, at least not without severely harming their own future prospects. The biggest reason for this is that the “Tea Party” is the Republican base, but with a new self-identification that is not under control of the Party.

Because they have no central structure, you can’t say in a blanket way that “The Tea Party” has problems. You might be able to say that grassroots conservatism has problems, but that’s not the same thing–and the reality of that is far more threatening to the Republican Party as a viable political entity. It was necessary to create the “Tea Party” to provide a home for right-wing base voters who railed against perceived failings in both parties, but would surely vote Republican.

Today, the tail may no longer wag the dog, but the GOP establishment still needs their base.

So no, we can’t really agree that the “Tea Party” had the worst week. It may turn out to be the politicians who thought they could ever “control” an irrational and headless movement.

Our friends at “The Fix” run down the surprise national political news today: the resignation of South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. The de facto figurehead of the Tea Party is leaving his Senate seat in order to become the new president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s resignation to take over as the president of the Heritage Foundation stunned the political world on Thursday and, in the process, raised a series of fascinating questions about his future, the Senate and the future of the conservative movement.

“It’s a creative, innovative move, and demonstrative of the newer way of thinking about how to use new tools today to move an agenda, where service in government is just one way, but not the only way, to drive the conversation,” said Eric Ueland, a former Senate chief of staff and now a lobbyist with the Duberstein Group.

That way of thinking marks a sea change from even a decade ago when the idea of DeMint abandoning his relatively prime perch in the Senate – he had built a sort of conservative hub within the GOP conference – to head a think tank (even one that pays as well as Heritage) would have seemed unthinkable.

But, the past decade has shown the influence that figures outside of elected office – Rush Limbaugh, Grover Norquist to name two – can have on the shape and direction of the conservative movement.  Serving in the House or Senate is no longer – in a world of social media, 24 hour cable news heavily focused on politics and online grassroots organizing – the sine qua non for a conservative wanting to push his (or her) ideas on a national level.

There is certainly some truth to the idea that you can be politically influential outside of elected office, but outside of the U.S. Senate? It’s a stretch to think that DeMint can be just as influential, if not moreso, as the head of a think tank. It’s just just specific Constitutional power, either. It is a lot easier to raise money for other candidates or causes when you are a sitting U.S. Senator, and there is significant political power in being able to raise money for others.

As we’ve written about in this space plenty of times, the Republican Party is having a hard time trying to figure out how to “tame” the Tea Party Frankenstein that DeMint helped create in 2010. While DeMint would likely never admit as much, this struggle likely played a significant role in his decision to leave the Senate.

For some politicians, it is easier to move on to something else than to make any public move towards the middle and actual governance.

CBS News’ Brian Montopoli writes this morning:

Boehner and the rest of the House Republican leadership laid out their offer in a letter to the president earlier this week. It said Republicans would cut a total of $1.2 trillion in spending, but it does not actually say what would be cut. The letter broadly says that the cuts would follow those put forth in what was called “the Bowles plan,” a reference to Democrat Erskine Bowles, who quickly put out a statement saying that the letter does not represent his beliefs. (Republicans were referencing testimony that Bowles gave to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction last year. That testimony represented Bowles’ understanding of the midpoint between the two sides at the time; he noted Monday that “circumstances have changed since then.”)

Let’s give House Republicans the benefit of the doubt and assume they are calling for the cuts articulated last year by Bowles. His testimony called for roughly $600 billion in Medicare savings, in part from raising the Medicare eligibility age, $300 billion in other discretionary spending cuts, and $300 billion in cuts to other mandatory spending programs.

Despite GOP claims that they represent a middle ground, there is simply no reason Democrats would agree to these cuts. Here’s why: If the nation goes off the fiscal cliff, it faces $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts split between domestic spending and military spending. Republicans are effectively proposing to keep the cuts but focus them entirely areas that Democrats want to protect: Domestic spending and other entitlements. Meanwhile, under the GOP plan, there would be no cuts to defense programs — the area Republicans want to protect. Why on earth would Democrats agree to a deal in which all the cuts are made to their priorities when they could simply do nothing and let the pain be shared by both sides?

Now to be fair, Montopoli doesn’t completely single out Republicans for blame in the present impasse over a budget deal to prevent sweeping automatic budget cuts and tax hikes set to take effect at the end of the year. According to this analysis, President Barack Obama’s aggressive stand in favor of resetting the present 35% top federal income tax rate to the Clinton-era 39.5%–again, only on income over $250,000–is “far from what Republicans could swallow.”

But it’s at least a specific proposal; more than John Boehner can deliver.

When it comes to new revenue – aka, additional money coming into the government – Boehner has set a target of $800 billion. This is not insignificant: The offer has already prompted howls from some on the right who oppose any new revenue. But it is also less than substantive, since Boehner declines to say how he would make the cuts — he merely says they should come through “pro-growth tax reform that closes special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates.” Does that mean getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction? Capping charitable deductions? The letter doesn’t say. [Pols emphasis]

With polling decisively indicating once again that intransigent Republicans will take the blame in the event of a failure to reach an agreement, what we have here is the equivalent of Paul Ryan’s infamous “budget with no numbers”–a proposal that really isn’t even a proposal, yet is nevertheless being insistently represented as a good-faith attempt at reaching an agreement.

Bottom line: both sides may be taking a hard line with a few weeks left to negotiate, but there’s a difference between doing so with specifics, and wasting everyone’s time. The polls say the public gets the difference, just as polls show that voters favor Obama’s proposal for raising taxes on high income earners while minimizing cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

With all this in mind, back to Boehner’s call to “get serious.”

A lot has been written today about the Tea Party and the problems it continues to cause the wing of the Republican Party that may actually be interested in governing. First, from “The Fix“:

Almost four years removed from its initial stirrings, the tea party movement finds itself riven by internal discord, without some of its most prominent leaders and faced with a party establishment that seems ready to abandon it – or at least buck its wishes – in the face of the 2012 election results.

“The Tea party has the opportunity to remain a leading force in American politics, but to do so, it must mature, take the next step and prove it can be part of a coalition that can actually govern,” said Jesse Benton, a longtime adviser to retiring Rep. Ron Paul and now campaign  manager for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s 2014 re-election race. “After two cycles, it’s not enough to just be the angry people waving Gadsden Flags and yelling about Washington.”…

…One senior Republican party strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the future of the tea party movement, expressed concern that while the tea party was at a “low point” today, the coming legislative fights in Congress could lead to a renaissance in the movement.

“What I worry about is that the fiscal cliff/debt ceiling negotiations become like TARP, which is what started this,” said the GOP strategist. “We get a deal that is good for the country but our base goes crazy and it gets them all ginned up again.”

As we’ve written before in this space, moderate Republican leaders understand all too well that the Tea Party is crippling their chances of winning back control from Democrats on both the national and state level. Republican leaders are doing what they can to weaken the influence of Tea Party-backed elected officials, but we don’t see a happy ending here. As the Associated Press reports:

House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to take plum committee assignments away from four conservative Republican lawmakers after they bucked party leaders on key votes isn’t going over well with advocacy groups that viewed them as role models.

Reps. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan will lose their seats on the House Budget Committee chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan next year. And Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and David Schweikert of Arizona are losing their seats on the House Financial Services Committee.

The move is underscoring a divide in the Republican Party between tea party-supported conservatives and the House GOP leadership.

“This is a clear attempt on the part of Republican leadership to punish those in Washington who vote the way they promised their constituents they would – on principle – instead of mindlessly rubber-stamping trillion dollar deficits and the bankrupting of America,” said Matt Kibbe, president of the tea party group FreedomWorks.

When you add this news to the fracturing of Speaker Boehner’s caucus and the seemingly rudderless GOP Senate leadership, you’ve got a nice recipe for a crap casserole. We’ve said it before: The Tea Party is absolutely killing the Republican Party. They had a nice honeymoon in the 2010 midterm elections, but it’s been all downhill ever since.

And the GOP has no idea how to stop it.

“Do I really need to spell this out for you?” is traditionally a rhetorical question.

But, when the subject at hand is American Muslims’ votes, the GOP consistently answers, “Yes.” Whether Republicans are inviting internationally infamous Islamophobes to speak at the Western Conservative Summit, or turning a deaf ear when voters reject Islamophobic GOP incumbents, they simply don’t seem to see any reason to mend fences or bury hatchets. In 2012, 85% of Muslim votes went to President Obama, a statistic Republican commentators prefer to use in their attacks on the President, rather than as the wake-up call it should be to their party.

A coalition of American Muslim organizations has formed to send a message directly to the GOP, starting with a full-page ad in the conservative Washington Times, spelling it out for Republicans.

According to the Council on American Islamic Relations (in a press release received by email):

That open letter to the GOP states in part:

“We are writing to offer an open invitation to reassess your party’s current relationship with American Muslims. As with other demographics, American Muslim support for Republicans has dropped precipitously in recent years. This shift away from the GOP is not set in stone, but its future direction is dependent on choices your party makes.”

In other words: Put Islamophobes in the corner, or face a future where Muslims are permanently stationed outside your “big tent,” voting consistently for Democrats.

Our friend Craig Hughes of RBI Strategies Tweeted not long after the election:

Well, as The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber reports today, Hughes was more right than anybody knew–that is, about what Republicans, around the country but particularly here in Colorado, believed would be the outcome going into an election they were about to lose.

It’s no secret that the Romney campaign believed it was headed for victory on Election Day. A handful of outlets have reported that Team Romney’s internal polling showed North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia moving safely into his column and that it put him ahead in a few other swing states. When combined with Ohio, where the internal polling had him close, Romney was on track to secure all the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. The confidence in these numbers was such that Romney even passed on writing a concession speech, at least before the crotchety assignment-desk known as “reality” finally weighed in.

Less well-known, however, are the details of the polls that led Romney to believe he was so close to the presidency. Which other swing states did Romney believe he was leading in, and by how much? What did they tell him about where to spend his final hours of campaigning? Why was his team so sanguine about its own polling, even though it often parted company with the publicly available data? In an exclusive to The New Republic, a Romney aide has provided the campaign’s final internal polling numbers for six key states…

The numbers include internal polls conducted on Saturday, November 3, and Sunday, November 4, for Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire. According to Newhouse, the campaign polled daily, then combined the results into two-day averages.

In the polling data provided to TNR by Mitt Romney’s chief internal pollster Neil Newhouse, Romney has a 2.5 point lead on President Barack Obama in Colorado over the weekend before Election Day. As you know, the President won Colorado by almost 5.5 points. The range of explanations offered by Newhouse in this story vary from Latino voters (which while significant, don’t fully cover the spread), over-reliance on self-identified “highly likely voters,” and the perils of polling on a Sunday. Each one of these, the story goes, unintentionally helped contribute to the false sense of optimism projected by the GOP going into Election Day.

This story again answers the question of whether the Romney campaign was convinced it was going to win, or whether there was a more complicated process of spin for the base that the higher levels of the campaign knew wasn’t true. Right to the very top, this was a campaign that did believe victory was imminent, and was genuinely surprised when it failed to materialize.

What this story doesn’t seem to adequately capture, beyond the raw numbers of how wrong they were, is the depth of the bubble–with the exception of Gallup and a few clearly GOP-skewed pollsters, Obama’s win in Colorado was accurately forecast in several pre-election polls.

It’s also worth noting, as Hughes did, that longtime local GOP operative Rich Beeson was Romney’s political director. Beeson’s willing participation in the groupthink and flawed assumptions that led the Romney campaign to believe Colorado was in their column shows the extent of the break with a reality they should have seen coming at them like a Mack truck.

Answer: a perhaps unprecedented extent.