OVER 48 YEARS AGO...

George F. Gilder & Bruce K. Chapman finished writing The Party That Lost Its Head, a post-mortem of the harm the Goldwater/Bircher crowd did to the GOP.  In it, they describe some of the craziness of the that crowd, much of which is still present in today's Tea Party.  Here's one example from page 5:

In Washington, the progressive GOP gubernatorial candidate, Daniel J. Evans, survived the overall Democratic crush in 1964. Yet a year later, the Republican National Committeewoman, Mrs. Francis Cooper, rather than resigning for her part in foisting Goldwater on the state's Republicans, declared her regret that the "Conservative Republican Party" had so generously acquiesced in Evans's candidacy. "Evans is supported by the Ripon Society," she reported, "which everybody knows is Communist dominated."(The Ripon Society is a Republican research organization.)

The Ripon Society was one of the very few truly intellectual Republican groups at that time.