Republican Civil War: Is There a Hardcore Conservative Rebellion Brewing?

The Politico published a piece yesterday about the tension between Republican leadership, who are starting to veer away from an emphasis on social issues and recast themselves "as a constructive, respectful opposition to a popular president," and the Republican base, who "have no desire to moderate their views."

GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party's own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

…."I've never seen the grass-roots quite as motivated, concerned and angry," said Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance and the state's RNC committeeman.

That they're wild-eyed about "homosexuality and immigration"—and their other perennial bailiwick, abortion—is the consummate evidence of their greatest fear: Queers, darkies, and uppity bitches overrunning the perfect, lily-white, patriarchal Christian nation that only exists in their fever-dreams and infecting it with our horrible progress-cooties.

The Republican leadership, the people sophisticated enough to not personally be offended by gays and people of color and feminists, but unethical enough to exploit their ignorant base's bigotry nonetheless, are losing control of their base. After three decades of fear-mongering, scapegoating, and wedge issue politicking, they're left with a seething conglomeration of intolerant bullies whose stubborn refusal to evolve ideologically is matched in astonishing obduracy only by their unjustifiable hatred.