In 2011, the number of “nativist extremists” groups, like the Minuteman, declined by 42 percent,
the center’s (SPLC's) report said. But at the same time the center said the number of anti-government “Patriot” groups grew to record levels.
The center began tracking what it calls “nativist extremist” groups after the Minuteman movement exploded in the mid-2000s. These groups distinguish themselves from regular anti-illegal-immigration opinion by directly confronting suspected illegal immigrants at the border, at day-labor centers or elsewhere, said Heidi Beirich, director of the center’s intelligence project.
Infighting, bad press and co-opting of the movement has driven its decline, Beirich said.
Groups such as the Arizona-based Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, once the best known of this category, splintered and dissolved. The arrest of one-time Minuteman Shawna Forde, for murdering an Arivaca man and his daughter in 2009, also drove people away.
Most important, Beirich said, anti-illegal-immigrant actions were taken up by state legislatures and absorbed as a major concern by groups such as the tea parties and the Republican Party. Many people who once concerned themselves with border-watch activities moved on to the broader concerns of the tea-party movement, she said
http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2012/03/19/report-border-watch-groups-in-ariz-vanishing/
Maybe the only good accomplished by the tea party and republican party. By adopting the "nativist extremist" hysteria of the Minuteman movement they have taken the "oxygen" away from their groups causing many of them to vanish.
Of course the bad news is that they have legitimized this hysteria by bringing it to a larger stages (the republican debates among others) than they smaller groups could ever have accomplished.
