The GOP is still turning itself inside out over the dilemma posed by the strength and influence of their wholly-out-of-touch base. A wide swath of high-ranking Republicans, especially in the Senate, are trapped between the hard knowledge that catering to their base is a guaranteed recipe for defeat and disgrace, and the cold fact that their base is the only group left in America willing to call themselves Republican. They can't win with them, can't win without them, and this paradox has become where the lines of a full-fledged Republican Party civil war have been drawn.
The question of who is joining which side was made clear Friday in an event at the Rock Church in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee held court for three hours during a lecture titled "Rediscovering God in America," during which they "urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life," according to a report by the Virginian-Pilot. "They and other speakers warned about the continuing availability of abortion, the spread of gay rights, and attempts to remove religion from American public life and school history books."
"I am not a citizen of the world," said Gingrich during the lecture. "I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator. I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."
"Huckabee told the audience he was disturbed to hear President Barack Obama say during his speech in Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday that one nation shouldn't be exalted over another," continued the Virginian-Pilot report. "'The notion that we are just one of many among equals is nonsense,' Huckabee said. The United States is a 'blessed' nation, he said, calling American revolutionaries' defeat of the British empire 'a miracle from God's hand.' The same kind of miracle, he said, led California voters to approve Proposition 8, which overturned a state law legalizing same-sex marriages."
This is the kind of talk GOP base voters lap up, and is also the kind of talk that has left the Republican Party with less than 30 percent support nationwide. Both Gingrich and Huckabee are believed to be seriously considering a run for the White House in 2012. Even at this early date, both appear to be angling for the support of GOP base voters, as evidenced by their remarks in Virginia last week. If they keep talking like they did on Friday, like as not that support will be there for them, but they very well could live to regret it. GOP base support wins primaries but not much else these days, and every time someone caters to that base, another hole gets ripped in the fabric of the Republican Party.
In other words, a whole lot of Faustian chickens are coming home to roost in the GOP's crumbling coop. The party courted those base voters, championed them, pandered to them and ultimately empowered them. Now, that power is subsuming the party, and for the time being, there is no end in sight.
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