Complete transcript. Excerpt below:
MADDOW: Is what we`re witnessing in this one race in Upstate New York -- is it the tea party movement flexing its electoral muscles? Is that how we should see this?
WEIGEL: It absolutely is. The Dick Armey-Newt Gingrich split, I think, it`s the most telling thing about this race. Dick Armey has been aligned with the tea party movement since the inception, since they split - - since conservatives reject the Republicans who voted for TARP.
And I -- "The Weekly Standard`s" role is the most interesting part to me, though, because this is a magazine that nine years ago was backing John McCain for president as a sort of center-left challenge to the Republican Party. Now, they are backing the third party, the conservative candidate, and it`s in alignment with the tea party movement. They`re saying that the Republican Party must not be allowed to come back to power with moderate candidate. They must -- if they come back to power, be pure candidates approved with Dick Armey`s rubber stamp and with the right statements on card check and ACORN and all the other litmus tests that have been created over this last year.
MADDOW: What are the forces that are weighing in against the Republican Party from the right here? There`s Dick Armey. There`s "The Weekly Standard." It seems to me like there aren`t a lot of local divisions that parallel the national division here. It sort of seems to me like this is a who`s who of national conservative movement figures coming in and kind of big-footing this race.
WEIGEL: Well, that`s the way -- that`s the way it looks. I mean, in D.C., I remember when Scozzafava was announced as the candidate, and the first Republicans I talked to said it`s over. The Republican activists who knew about this said it was over.
But in the district, tea party activists are just working the phones getting local Republicans to diss her. The chairman of the Oneida County Republican Party spoke to one of the original tea party organizers, this guy, Michael Patrick Leahy and said, "I`ve already written the race off. We lost this from the get-go. The conservative party can`t be allowed to run our situation."
It`s a very organic fight. I mean, as much as national conservatives are organizing around this, the tea parties have always, you know, pounded their chests about independents and not Republican Party pawns. And this is the -- this is the most extreme case you`ve seen of that. They`re willing to make a Republican go down with the ship, locally and nationally, if it proves the conservative movement is independent.
MADDOW: Well, what do you think the national waves of this would be? I mean, local Republicans in this district thought they needed a moderate Republican to win in this district. If conservatives -- whether they`d be local, as you point out, or national, as we`re also seeing -- if conservatives force that moderate Republican candidate out of the race who local Republicans chose, what`s the -- what are the ripples? What`s the impact nationally?
WEIGEL: Republicans are pretty confident that they`ve going to win the Virginia governor`s race. They`re going to sweep in Virginia, they think. So, they are ready to spin the day after the election that conservatism won.
If a Democrat picks up that seat in New York, they`re going to say, "Well, look at the conservative vote plus the Republican vote. And then look at Bob McDonald in Virginia and maybe look at this election result in Maine."
I mean, they view this as almost a free vote because if a Republican wins the race, all people who endorse the conservative party candidate tell me they are ready to go and mount a primary challenge to her. She`d be spending 10 months as an incumbent member of Congress, getting beaten up by Michelle Malkin, by Dick Armey, by all these people, having trouble getting Republicans in Congress to endorse her.
I mean, the message -- this is not so much a campaign about electing a congressman. It`s part of the cause. In the run for 2010, they`re willing to throw this Republican under the bus if it makes the point that the Republican Party cannot be allowed to send moderate liberals, supporters of abortion rights to Congress.
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