Will Virginia GOP Infighting Help Democrats in 2016?

Other than wanting to keep gays permanent 3rd class citizens, disenfranchising minorities, kicking the working poor to the curb and controlling every aspect of a woman's womb, there is little else Virginia Republicans agree on.  Internecine warfare continues between the Christofascist/Tea Party elements and those few sane - sane being a very relative term - who realize that given Virginia's changed demographics the game plan that works in highly gerrymandered distracts doesn't work in state wide votes.  A piece in the Washington Post suggests that this dysfunction could harm the GOP's White House aspirations in 2016.  Here are some highlights:

Feuding within Virginia’s state GOP is alarming prominent national Republicans who think the infighting in a crucial swing state threatens the party’s quest to recapture the White House in 2016.

The rift pits centrist conservatives against tea party and Libertarian activists, and it is playing out in divisive primaries and causing wrangling for control of the party’s state organization.

A bitter source of the conflict — one almost certain to ignite renewed debate as 2016 approaches — is whether the state GOP will select a presidential candidate in a primary or at a convention, a process likely to influence whether the winner is a centrist or a right-wing Republican.

Virginia’s GOP has not won a statewide race in six years, a streak that Republicans partly attribute to the infighting. The conflict flared in full public view last year during a rancorous Republican primary in which a largely unknown tea party activist, David Brat, vanquished then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

A statewide primary, with its higher voter turnout and prolonged exposure, is an opportunity for the eventual nominee to begin building a Virginia campaign organization. The conservative coalition that controls the party, however, is considering a convention, thinking that the activists it would draw would energize the GOP.

Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who was an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said the GOP has “little room for error” in a “crucial” state such as Virginia.

“The last thing any presidential candidate needs is to drop into a battleground state and have the state party folks going at it like the Hatfields and McCoys,” Madden said. “Every ounce of energy used fighting internally distracts the party from the real opponent.”

“They’re like feudal lords fighting among themselves instead of a common enemy,” said Brendan Quinn, a Republican consultant and former executive director of the New York state GOP. “At some point, you’re going to have to have the national party step in. You’re going to have adult supervision and someone saying, ‘You’ll have to get along.’ ”

Establishment Republicans contend they’re losing statewide because moderate voters are wary of tea party and Libertarian candidates who espouse what they consider extreme views on issues such as climate change. Just three years ago, Virginia Republicans were ridiculed on national television for supporting a measure that would have required women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before obtaining an abortion.

Partly as a result of such publicity, voters have gravitated toward McAuliffe and other Democrats, who have focused more on issues such as jobs and education. “To win statewide you have to be a coalition — you can’t be a private club with an admissions committee,” Davis said.

The state GOP, [Bill] Bolling said, “has to make a fundamental choice: Do they want to be an echo chamber for the tea party and other ideologically driven groups, or do they want to actually win?”

With the extremists at The Family Foundation - an extremist "Christian" group - largely setting Virginia GOP policy at this point, do not expect any moderation or sanity anytime soon.  When the GOP leadership allowed the Christofascists to take control of the party base, they made a pact with the Devil and the cost of that bargain may soon become painfully evident.