GOP Fratricide in Virginia?

I have commented recently on the potential civil war brewing in the Republican Party of Virginia and the party's all but the coronation ceremony in which the, in my view, mentally ill and possibly closeted homophobe, Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli will be the GOP's 2013 standard bearer in the race for Governor of Virginia.  Today, the Virginia GOP bears little resemblance to the party in which I was very active (for 8 years I was a City Committee member for Virginia Beach) at a time Christofascists and Tea Party extremists did not rule the party.  Indeed, to be a Republican in Virginia nowadays requires that one (i) be insane, (ii) have had a lobotomy, (iii) be a fire breathing Christofascist seeking to establish a theocracy, (iv) be utterly untethered from objective reality, (v) be a white supremacist, (vi) hold one's noise and chug gallons of Kool-Aid, or (vi) exhibit some combination of the foregoing.   Now the Washington Post comments on the ongoing lunacy within the Virginia GOP.  Here are excerpts:

REPUBLICANS IN VIRGINIA have been busy downsizing their tent for some time, mainly to their own detriment. Despite some success in state legislative elections, which owe much to gerrymandered districts, they have lost three straight elections for the U.S. Senate, two for the presidency and two out of the last three for governor. Not coincidentally, that anemic record coincides with the party’s sharp tilt to the right, which has made centrists feel unwelcome.

So it was that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, a right-wing firebrand who has flirted with birtherism, denied climate change, bashed gays and waged a jihad against abortion, managed to outmaneuver Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling. By any measure, Mr. Bolling qualifies as a rock-ribbed conservative. But his pragmatic streak and mild demeanor paled in comparison to Mr. Cuccinelli’s flame-throwing appeal to tea partyers and other GOP radicals. On Wednesday, Mr. Bolling announced that he was bowing out of contention for the Republican nomination for governor.

[T]he method by which Mr. Cuccinelli secured the GOP’s nod — by forcing a nominating convention instead of a primary, thereby excluding most of his party’s voters from the process — is a reminder of the internecine bitterness that has gripped the Republican Party in Virginia for years.

Limiting voter participation in elections is anti-democratic; it’s also frequently self-defeating. Republicans in a number of states, including Virginia, tried to obstruct voting by minorities, the young and the old by means of tougher voter ID rules in this year’s presidential elections. It didn’t work. But it certainly reinforced the impression that Republicans are hostile to those voters.
 
Little wonder that Mr. Bolling, in withdrawing from the GOP contest, has refused to endorse Mr. Cuccinelli.