More on the GOP Civil War

Rob rightly notes that the old GOP coalition is coming up apart at the seams, in an increasingly ugly fashion. Count Rush Limbaugh among the Hugh Hewitt ABM (Anyone But McCain -- or Huckabee) crowd. As David Brooks reports:

Mitt Romney’s win pretty much guarantees a bitter fight for the nomination. If you doubt that, here is what Rush Limbaugh said about McCain and Huckabee on his program today: “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”

Wow, once again I find myself amazed at a GOP/conservative establishment that would be more at peace with a pro-abortion candidate (Giuliani) or pro-torture candidates (Giuliani and Romney) than with John McCain or Mike Huckabee because the two have the temerity to say comforting things to middle-class families.

As Ross Douthat observes, it's not even free-market ideology that fuels the anti-McCain, anti-Huck ire. After all, Romney's Michigan-winning pitch -- to send Washington into Detroit to turn the Big Three automakers around -- suggests far more government intervention into the economy than anything Mac or Huck has to say.

But that's different, apparently, because Mitt wants to take care of corporations -- while McCain and Huck want to take care of, shudder, people. And any deviation from corporatism, it turns out, seems to be the single unpardonable offense among the GOP's top dogs.

We can only hope Rush is right when he says a Huck or McCain victory would change the GOP forever -- because the party needs it.