A Republican earthquake, will there be a tsunami?

Richard A. Viguerie, one of the key figures in building the framework and organization of "the religious right," has called on them to splinter off and create a "third force," a third party or, "at the very least, conservatives must stop funding the Republican National Committee and other party groups." He also said they should sit out the 2006 election.

If he's serious and not just playing a huge political card here, this is huge. Here's the WaPo editorial, and here's a shorter AFP article about it.

I'll probably write more on this later, but it's big, so I wanted to get it up. (By the way, he mentions a spending bill, Harriet Miers and Dubai Ports as his turning points affirming my earlier guess that Hariet Miers was Bush's "jumping the shark" moment.)

Also, interestingly, Viguerie was the first "expert" in a NYTimes piece a week ago titled, "Conservative Christians Criticize Republicans." So, was that a trial ballon? He got a good response, and decided to extend it?

(A more cynical analysis might be that Viguerie has read the 2006 tea leaves and doesn't want to devalue his movement by being on the losing side. Or, he could see a loss coming and is trying to set up his faction to have more power in the 2008 Republican presidential decisions by claiming that it was his group's not voting that made the difference.)