Actual governing is (still!) not on the Republican party’s list of things to do.

The real action in American politics these days is the in-house feud among Republicans. It features the center-right GOP establishment in one corner and the talk show hosts and Tea Party activists in the other.

The party’s congressional leaders are being derided by the far right as RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and “squishes” for any willingness to make the kind of deals with Democrats that are essential if Congress is to work. …JuanWilliams,TheHill

The polls have turned against them. The biggest losers are the party leadership.

A late August Quinnipiac poll gave Republicans in Congress only a 12 percent job approval rating. That dismal rating would not be possible if there was any support among the Republican base for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the party’s elected leaders on Capitol Hill. …JuanWilliams,TheHill

(One conservative commentator noted that if this situation were to be repeated in the corporate world, the Republican leadership would have been fired by the board long since.)

Okay. So now one of the certifiably nutty candidates for party leadership — Trump or whoever — wins the nomination. What then?

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) got in trouble with Trump, when he said the businessman’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was bringing out the party’s “crazies.”

But what happens when those “crazies” try to run Congress?

Trump and the 16 other candidates for the GOP’s presidential nomination made news when they signed a pledge to support the party’s nominee. That ruled out a third party run.

But it seems implausible that all of them would take a comparable pledge, to support the party’s top elected officials — the Republican Congressional leadership. The sheer improbability of them doing so tells us all we need to know about just how badly the GOP has splintered. …JuanWilliams,TheHill

Cross-posted from Prairie Weather

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