For the past few decades, the GOP has used coded language and promises they knew they could no keep to fire up the “base”, without having to actually deliver much in the form of legislation. It worked for a long time, because the crazies were a minority within the GOP, and they had no other viable political option apart from GOP candidates. The right wing was, for a long time, carefully managed, fed a steady diet of propaganda, and kept under the control of party leaders. That is, until recently.

After the Bush years, and the disastrous McCain/Palin candidacy, large numbers of loosely-affiliated moderates have left the GOP. But, the “base” didn’t leave, they are still there. So, as the moderates left, the “base” became the new majority within the GOP. We call them the “Tea Party”, but they are the same people who comprised the GOP base for decades. Now, the GOP has an interesting problem: their constituents actually believed all the deranged propaganda the GOP has been feeding them over the years, and now that the right wing has control of the party, they are electing their own via the primaries. They are demanding that the GOP enact the crazy peomises they have made over the years.

This creates a number of interesting problems for the GOP party leadership. How do you tell your base that the things you have been telling them all these years are completely insane? How do you tell people that you have been manipulating them for decades, and that the things they believe, which you taught them, were never meant to be represented in actual legislative policy? You can’t compromise when you really believe that the opposition isn’t just your political opponent, but the enemy of your way of life. You don’t make deals with that which you have been told all your life is abject, craven evil. You act to destroy it, because that’s what you do with evil: destroy it.

After years of telling their constituents that government is the enemy, the GOP now finds itself unable to keep the lunatics away from the levers of power. It’s no longer the top-down party of discipline that it used to be. The 11th commandment is being forgotten, as the old guard is increasingly viewed by the base as collaborating with the enemy. The GOP is becoming a real grassroots movement, with a twist: almost everything the base thinks they know is bullshit, fed to them for years in a carefully managed diet of propaganda.

And now, it is all coming apart, to everyone’s detriment. What a fucking mess.