It looks like the impotent, racist, violent, Tea Party folks have ousted Senator Bob Bennett in Utah.

Republican Senator Bob Bennett was thrown out of office yesterday by delegates at the Utah GOP convention in what represents a stunning defeat for a once-popular three-term incumbent who fell victim to a growing conservative movement nationwide.

Bennett's failure to make it into Utah's GOP primary -- let alone win his party's nomination -- makes him the first congressional incumbent to be ousted this year and demonstrates the difficult challenges candidates are facing from the right in 2010.

Bennett survived a first round of voting yesterday among about 3,500 delegates but was a distant third in the second round. He garnered just under 27 percent of the vote. Businessman Tim Bridgewater had 37 percent and attorney Mike Lee got 35 percent.

"Don't take a chance on a newcomer,'' Bennett had pleaded in his brief speech to the delegates before the second round of voting began. "There's too much at stake.''

Bennett's endorsements by the National Rifle Association and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney did little to stave off anger toward the Washington establishment from delegates.

Fox News has this rather juicy bit on the prospects for the less than fiscally conservative politicians in Washington.

Bennett isn't the only Republican lawmaker in trouble as other moderate candidates across the country find themselves being abandoned by GOP voters in favor of those backed by Tea Party activists, such as with Senate races in Arizona, Kentucky and New Hampshire.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist decided to run for Senate as an independent rather than face an almost certain primary defeat at the hands of Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, Florida's former state House speaker.

DNC Chairman Tim Kaine emphasized the Tea Partiers' role in recent primary politics.

"This is just the latest battle in the corrosive Republican intra-party civil war that has resulted in the Tea Party devouring two Republicans in just as many weeks," Kaine said. "If there was any question before, there should now be no doubt that the Republican leadership has handed the reigns to the Tea Party."

And yeah Democrats. The Tea Party is destroying the Old Republican Party. It is changing it from a mainly socially conservative party to a mainly fiscally conservative party. Which is to say a more libertarian party.

So what is happening in other states? Real Clear Politics has a few words.

In Arizona, Sen. John McCain is in a tough primary fight against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a conservative talk-radio host. In Kentucky, Rand Paul, the son of libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, is gaining momentum in his challenge against the GOP establishment's pick of Secretary of State Trey Grayson to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning.

In New Hampshire, former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte is battling three Republican challengers to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Judd Gregg.

...while in the short term, the now lame-duck Bennett might be freed up for a vote with Democrats here or there, over the long haul Republicans will now be even more frightened that, if they don't move hard to the right, they will suffer the same fate. Illogical as that may sound, the Bennett ejection holds a powerful message that the far right of the GOP has taken over.

Cross Posted at Power and Control