Unless you frequent right wing blogs such as Sonoran Alliance or SeeingRedAZ, you may have missed the tidbit that disgraced ex-state Senator Russell Pearce has won the endorsement of Arizona GOP Chair Tom Morrissey for the unpaid position Pearce is seeking: First Vice Chair of the Arizona Republican Party.

Morrissey's endorsement was never in doubt. He's a stalwart Pearce backer, and spoke at a meagerly-attended rally on Pearce's behalf in Mesa during last year's recall election. 

Pearce is running against incumbent Diane Ortiz-Parsons, who, to judge by her website, is as conservative as Pearce. She also apparently has a good reputation, and is respected for the job she's done. 

But the consensus seems to be that, being that she's a Latina and that the biggest bigot in the state wants her job, she will be crushed when the vote goes down at this Saturday's state GOP meeting.

Lovely message some Arizona tuskers are sending, eh? If you're brown, we don't want you around, unless your name happens to be Olivia Cortes.

Jeff Vath over at the non-crazy Republican blog Politico Mafioso predicts a Pearce win and says insiders are telling him the plan is for Morrissey to step down at some point and turn the Arizona Republican Party over to Pearce.

As I mentioned in a recent blog, the state GOP's bylaws currently contain this provision:

"In the case of a vacancy in the office of the state chairman, unless a statutory or mandatory meeting is scheduled within 90 days, the first vice chairman shall call a meeting of the state committee within 45 days to elect a new state chairman."

The chairmanship is unpaid, but it would give Pearce a power-base and a platform to spout his odious anti-immigrant message. That's in addition to the paying gig he just scored over at Sean McCaffrey's nativist shill group Ban Amnesty Now.

That Arizona Republicans would be this close to handing their organization over to a recalled politician whose tenure in office and re-election effort both were mired in corruption and controversy reveals the deep insanity at the core of the Sand Land GOP. 

They ain't all nuts, but the Looney Tunes run the bin, and as long as the GOP remains dominant in Arizona, that state of affairs concerns us all.

• Feathered Bastard
• Russell Pearce Recall
• Something Wicked This Way Comes