I’ve been making the point for a long time that the Republican Party is not really a political party. It’s a dumping ground for people that don’t fit into the Democratic Party for some reason. The groups that find themselves in the GOP don’t have a lot in common with one another. Many would prefer to be in the Democratic party, but circumstances make it impossible.

Romney famously ran on the “three legs of the GOP base.” That was economic conservatives, social conservatives and foreign policy hawks. That’s not a terrible formulation for a political party, but it is not based in reality. The so-called social conservatives, for example, are much more populist and localist than the economic conservatives can tolerate.

Similarly, the foreign policy hawks are not in line with the economic conservatives on a lot of things. The main reason people favor a tough line with the muzzies is so the muzzies will stay over in their countries. Many foreign policy hawks, like me for example, are OK with letting Afghanistan return to the 5th century. They should remain backward. Close down their airports, electric plants and water systems. Problem solved. That’s heresy with the economic conservatives.

Political parties in America have always been coalitions of divergent interests with one or two unifying items. From FDR to Jimmy Carter, the Democrats were Yankee elites running a coalition of ethnic groups, unions, southern populists and intellectuals. That’s given way to a party of Yankee elites running a coalition of fringe weirdos, blacks, immigrants, academic elites and their students. The Democrats are mostly the party of people who went to college and would have preferred to stay there.

The Republicans are not a coalition of anything now. If you are a Southern conservative, you have little in common with the conservative of the northeast. People in Massachusetts, for example, who call themselves conservative and vote Republican, are not religious and they are indifferent on the homos and abortion. Their leaders are often pro-abortion and gay marriage. Contrast that with the Democrats where everyone is violently in favor of abortion.

My formulation of the Republican elected officials is that one third wish they were Democrats, one third just like the easy life of elected office and the rest are genuine conservatives in the traditional meaning of the term. John Boehner, for example, would have been a fine Speaker in 1984, when the Democrats ran the House and tangled with Reagan over policy. Boehner would have been fine at building majorities to compromise on the small issues.

There’s something else. The Democrat Party is now a purely ideological party. This is a first in America. Europe has ideological parties, but American has never had them, at least ones that gain votes. The Democrats are now a party of the New Religion. You can’t win office as a Democrat being pro-life or if you are against homo marriage. You have to embrace anti-racism, multiculturalism and egalitarianism in order to have a place. I’ll note that all Democratic House members are open borders fanatics.

How a coalition party, especially a haphazard one, responds when faced with a an ideological party is debatable. The experience of Europe in the first third of the 20th century is not encouraging. It does appear that the House Republicans are so divided they cannot pick a speaker. No one dares say it, but the issues dividing the party are the old national questions, particularly immigration. The people running the party want open borders. The insurgents want national sovereignty. There is no room to compromise.

My guess is the people in charge will stay in charge. They will employ an age old strategy of backing a novus homo that they think will fail and embarrass the upstarts. Just in case, you can be sure they will work hard to make sure he does fail. They are playing the long game from the comfort of the inner party. Some of these people have been in DC so long, their GPS reads “thar be monsters” for the areas outside the Beltway.

The only whiff of good news in any of this is that I sense that the sovereignty issue is playing much better in the Northeast and Midwest than elsewhere in the country. The South is much more mildly opposed to immigration, simply due to the cultural arrangements and the long history with migrant farm workers. In the Northeast, the old Yankee paranoia and intolerance is showing up in the immigration debate.

If the GOP can evolve as a party to reflect the mild nationalism of lightly managed trade, constitutional liberty and regulated immigration, it can be a majority party that has appeal nationally. That will require something on the ball in the leadership positions, but all the incentives are pointing the wrong way now. A party riven with dissent ends up with the worst leaders of the various factions. The result are guys like Mike McCarthy who is as dumb as a goldfish.

We live in interesting times.