In Mother Jones, Stephan Salisbury argues that anti-Muslim race-baiting – popular among the Tea Party Right in 2010 – isn’t actually an effective tactic for winning elections. He looks at some of the most prominent congressional and gubernatorial candidates to hop on the anti-“Ground Zero Mosque” bandwagon and finds that most of them didn’t score enough political points to actually win their elections.

While prominent Muslim-bashers like Rep. Renee Ellmers and Rep. Allen West won seats in Congress, Salisbury points out, many others – including New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, Tennessee’s Ron Ramsey and Lou Ann Zelinick and Nevada’s Sharron Angle – couldn’t scare up enough Islamophobia to catapult them into elected office.

Of course, it’s encouraging that anti-Muslim scare tactics aren’t powerful enough to win general elections, or even Republican primaries, on their own. But looked at another way, Salisbury’s data is incredibly depressing. The kind of Islamophobic fear-mongering that was so pervasive in the 2010 elections is a variety of ugliness that had, until very recently, existed on the fringiest fringe of the Right. But, in 2010 that ugliness spread from fringe crusaders like Pamela Geller to long-shot Tea Party candidates looking to make a name for themselves to prominent figures on the American Right. The fight over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” brought dangerous anti-Muslim rhetoric into the mainstream – and many of those who repeated it were considered not fringe characters but serious contenders for office.

These outspoken anti-Muslim congressional and gubernatorial candidates, even the unsuccessful ones, helped create the echo chamber that made baseless Islamophobia the standard in Republican politics and the right-wing media.

Yes, it’s good news that the base that’s motivated by Islamophobic attacks is relatively small. But it’s stunning that those attacks are accepted in mainstream political discourse at all.