McCain's Daughter Warns Of Imminent GOP Civil War-- And Tattoos And Hybrids For Conservatives

It wouldn't be as bloody as Texas Governor Rick Perry's lead balloon of seceding from the Union and sparking another real Civil War, but Meghan McCain warned at the Log Cabin convention yesterday that her party is on the brink of their own civil war. (Interestingly, the gay Republicans have just broken into two warring factions, an extreme right version having formed their own "less gay-oriented," more selfishness-oriented entity called GOProud opposing the Log Cabin Repugs which McCain and GOP consultant Steve Schmidt addressed this weekend.)

This morning we talked about the ferocious and potentially deadly Republican civil war over immigration reform and yesterday we watched as far right extremist Gresham Barrett (R-SC) was mercilessly booed and heckled by further right and even more extremist GOP teabaggers on Friday.

The California Republican Party has erupted into a full blown civil war between mainstream conservatives and ideological extremists from beyond the fringe. They are trying to recall several of their own elected officials and one far right congressman, Devin Nunes, demanded that the state's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, resign. Up in Alaska the Republican Senate president and House speaker joined with a bipartisan majority of state legislators to reject Governor Sarah Palin's choice of bizarre and extremist loon Anthony Ross as Alaska Attorney General. There's barely a state in the Union without a fratricidal bloodletting in GOP-land. It's wrecking the party in Pennsylvania, New York, Kansas, Minnesota, Florida, Colorado and even Utah (despite Rich Frank's claim today that the Mormons have grown all warm and fuzzy and mainstreamish)! Today's GOP stands for nothing but obstructionism... to everything. There's nothing left for them to talk about but secession and cow farts.

Their own base is deserting them in a fit of unfocused rage and ratings-generating ad revenues. As the torment the South Carolina teabaggers put Barrett through showed, the teabaggers are like a genie the GOP and their media allies let out of the bottle. It may be harder to get it back in again.

If Republicans are thinking these are the guys who are going to be manning their phone banks in 2010, the ones who are going to be knocking on doors, or coughing up checks for the RNC-- they better think again. These folks are gone. They've left the reservation-- a lot of them left it back in 1992-- and they're not going to come back.  

This was a Ron Paul crowd. This was a Constitution Party crowd. This was a third party all the way crowd. Campaign for Liberty wasn't just helping out with the show-- this was their show, and any GOP candidate who thought guys waving "Pelosi Sux" signs were an automatic win, missed the zeitgeist of this group by a Bob Barr Country mile.

So back to Meghan for a moment, who probably does not speak for her father, the senator-- at least not entirely. She's still using far right icons Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham as foils in her huge and successful publicity barrage. And the 24-year old blogger and soon-to-be author told the Log Cabin convention that in a battle between the reactionary forces of the past (the Coulter/Ingraham wing) and the more progressive forces of the future, there's "a war brewing in the Republican Party."

Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future... I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes…I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past… I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots and lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.

Meghan complains Karl Rove is stalking her-- on Twitter; he's just a tweet-talkin' guy.