The GOP's internal war heats up, again

It -- or I should say they, three middle-aged white guys -- launched last Saturday with a "listening tour" more platitudinous than receptive, which nevertheless earned the wrath of their party's bombastic censor, Rush Limbaugh, who, being a radio talk show host, naturally despises listening. That was major-league strike Number One.

All week, throughout the week, they took their hits in other media as well: where they staged the forum (at a suburban pizzeria), whom they invited or didn't invite (e.g. Palin), who attended (virtually all Republicans), what was said (see above) -- all of it suffered a deafening level of scrupulous ridicule that desperate listening-tourists would much prefer to do without.

But, as the Politico reported Thursday, then came what may yet prove the real coup de grâce: "Social conservatives are blasting the [NCNA] ... as a misguided and weak-kneed initiative that is out of touch with the GOP rank and file."

Why? Because NCNA's founding fathers, in a shockingly sensible attempt to maybe appeal to that occasional moderate Republican or conservative Democrat, had not only amputated social issues such as same-sex marriage from their written list of policy concerns, but "when asked if he would be open to supporting pro-choice candidates or those supporting gun control," Cantor responded, "We are, and should be, an inclusive party."

Well, that pluralistic dog ain't ever gonna hunt for puritanical conservatives; not even Ms. Palin's belated invite was enough to contain their seemingly inexhaustible supply of moralistic outrage.

I have no problem with that: That's what they do -- and perhaps it's why the Prime Mover put them here to begin with; to personify in America the Talibanic pitfalls of mixing God's-given Reason with ancient patriarchal doctrine.

What amuses, however -- or amuses me, anyway -- is their unshakable bastardization of much more recent history. In the attempt to fool others, they are fooling themselves.

Politico-evangelical Mike Huckabee was the first prominent anti-NCNA voice to thickly apply the revisionism: "Frankly, the party was in pretty good shape [in the 1980s] and can be again, but" -- which is to say "because," in Huckabee's context -- "Ronald Reagan didn't summarily dismiss values voters like this new group of 'experts' has."

True, Reagan didn't dismiss them. He just exploited them. And if Mr. Huckabee were ever to scour the actual political history of the 1980s, sans nostalgic reading glasses, he'd know that.

Those "values voters," Mike, were in virtual revolt against Reagan and threatening to leave the party. Many came to detest or at least distrust the Gipper for his secular emphasis on atomistic libertarianism and his intolerable schmoozing with the godless Russkies. Reagan talked a good socially conservative game, but in reality he pushed and accomplished very little along socially conservative policy lines. He brilliantly comprehended the realpolitik of it all: Where else were they going to go come Election Day?

The latter's resentment persisted, of course, resulting in the party's determined ideological cleansing, which in turn has resulted, predictably, in severe marginalization. But to the far socially conservative right, any slim internal dissent is now read as a threatening sign of wholesale apostasy. "The moderates have been saying the same thing all these years, and now they’re just seeing a renewed opportunity to push their ideas," said Iowa congressman Steve King in a representative flurry of classic persecution-complex.

Radicals, whether left or right, can never quite get radical enough. There's always someone just the slightest bit ideologically purer to the radical's fringey edge, and therefore to demonstrate one's righteous faithfulness to the cause one must forever out-radicalize one's internal competitors, who of course are meanwhile doing the same thing. It's a self-destructive, self-devouring cycle, proven time and again from Revolutionary France to Stalinist Russia.

But the radicals can't ever see it. They're too busy getting purer and purer and impressing their playmates with unrivaled righteousness. Thus sane messages -- such as Lindsey Graham's: "We are not losing blue states and shrinking as a party because we are not conservative enough" -- go unheeded, scoffed at, and downright censored.

And that -- I've got to give them credit -- is precisely what the NCNA, however fecklessly, is, or at least was, attempting to body-block. It was pulling a return to Reaganism without the socially conservative-exploitation -- which was what ultimately got them into trouble to begin with.

Will the NCNA stick with that approach? It's looking iffy. "Cantor’s team ... is not planning to announce any new members or appearances for a few weeks," reports the Politico -- meaning it is either merely licking its wounds from the week or is rehuddling just to cave in. If the latter, then Cantor & Co. can kiss the GOP goodbye. For it will then swallow whole what little is left of itself.