John Heilemann wrote a really good piece for NYMag about how the GOP is currently tearing itself apart:

How the 2012 Primary Has Revealed a GOP on the Verge of Collapse

…All of which is to say that when Santorum takes the podium to address a Michigan Faith & Freedom Coalition rally in Shelby Charter Township, the 1,500 souls he sees before him are his kind of people—and soon enough he is speaking their language. To explain how America has always differed from other nations, Santorum invokes the Almighty: “We believe … we are children of a loving God.” To elucidate the evils of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and cap-and-trade, he inveighs against liberal elites: “They want to control you, because like the kings of old, they believe they know better than you.” To highlight what’s at stake in 2012, he unfurls a grand (and entirely farkakte) historical flourish: “This decision will be starker than at any time since the election of 1860”—you know, the one featuring Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas on the eve of the Civil War.

via: ihatepeacocks

[...] The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology, however. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist. The result has been a party divided along the lines of culture and class: Establishment versus grassroots, secular versus religious, upscale versus downscale, highfalutin versus hoi polloi. And with those divisions have arisen the competing electoral coalitions—shirts versus skins, regulars versus red-hots—represented by Romney and Santorum, which are now increasingly likely to duke it out all spring.

[...] Only the most mindless of ideologues reject the truism that America would be best served by the presence of two credible governing parties instead of the situation that currently obtains. A Santorum nomination would be seen by many liberals as a scary and retrograde proposition. And no doubt it would make for a wild ride, with enough talk of Satan, abortifacients, and sweater vests to drive any sane man bonkers. But in the long run, it might do a world of good, compelling Republicans to return to their senses—and forge ahead into the 21st century. Which is why all people of common sense and goodwill might consider, in the days ahead, adopting a slogan that may strike them as odd, perverse, or even demented: Go, Rick, go.

Read it all…

That ending though… Charles P. Pierce responds to the ending of this, otherwise, really good piece:

As to that last part, well, I’d like to know the scenario under which any of those guys would be more “moderate” — and, thereby, more “electable” — in 2016 than they are today. They certainly don’t represent a “moderate” reaction to a potential Santorum electoral cataclysm. Zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan is an outright extremist on fiscal policy, and counts as a “policy intellectual” only on those days when actual policy intellectuals are at the dogtrack. Chris Christie is “moderate” in almost nothing in his life, including his utter inability to avoid being a jackass on television. He’s also on the wrong side of most social issues. Bobby Jindal signed on with Rick Perry’s semi-militia “Tenth Amendment” bullshit, and he’s every bit the ultramontane Catholic that Santorum is. It’s far too late for Jeb Bush a) to take back all the Schiavo nonsense, and the anti-affirmative action pandering that had people sitting in at his office, and b) to change his last name. Which leaves us with Mitch Daniels, value-sized governor of Indiana, union-buster,defunder of Planned Parenthood, and, lest we forget, the budget director under George W. Bush, where his job was fairly easy because all the really big stuff — two wars, Medicare Part D — was kept off the books.

These are the people who, if it becomes absolutely necessary, are going to lead the Republican party back from the brink and back to “serious and forward-thinking” moderation? Does Heilemann have the faintest clue how absolutely rabid the Republican base is going to get if the Kenyan Muslim Usurper gets re-elected at all, much less decisively? (I suspect he does, because he’s a good reporter.) It is going to be four completely batshit years of internet conspiracy theories, fantastical chain e-mails, talk-radio hydrophobia, and bloody-fanged abandoned wrath until hell won’t have it any more.  Anyone who wants to run in 2016 is going to have to spend a lot of time being the respectable face of all of that — or, at the very least, doing things to placate the madmen that nobody with any self-respect should want to do. The clown car, alas, has become a motorcade.