This situation cannot continue indefinitely. Eventually, a reasonable Republican will emerge that can be embraced by enough people in the party that a credible campaign against the Democrats can be mounted. This will also have an unexpected benefit in that it will make it more difficult for extremists on the Left to get any traction. The main problem with the Palins and Bachmanns and Gingriches of this world is that they provoke the same lunacy on the other side as a counterbalancing reaction. They feed on each other. If Obama wasn't already the candidate-presumptive, there would be all kind of loonies coming out on the Left.

The more likely, reasonable candidates seem to be dropping out because extremists despise moderates in their ranks even more than they do their ideological opposites. Even those who honor Reagan as a saint no longer seem to follow his 11th commandment.

A partisan in the other party can always be dismissed and demonized, but when someone on your side questions your program it calls into question your personal fitness for movement leadership, and you cannot employ the usual calumny and conspiracy theories against them. For the True Believer, apostasy is always preferable to heresy. A man on your side who tells you in a calm, reasonable voice that you are mistaken can be a real meme-breaker. The knuckle-draggers and their demagogues know this, and exploit this to drag the center towards their extreme. And its always those furthest from the center who claim the loudest that they and only they are the true moderates.

It's still early in the campaign and I'm certain that eventually the Republican Party will come to their senses and divest themselves of these yahoos. Not that I'm in any hurry for them to do so...

Still, I like living in a country where even if my man loses, I do not have to fear it's the end of the world as we know it. And I like it when my fellow citizens, even those in opposition to me, feel the same way.