Josh Marshall highlights the deep divide within the GOP that has been exposed by Sonia Sotomayor's nomination:

a key dilemma for the GOP in the early Obama era is that they are increasingly divided between people who want to get the party back into the business of winning elections and ultras who want to go totally off the deep end with often extreme rhetoric and quests for ideological purity. What's more, these 'pragmatists, for lack of a better word, are cowed by the ultras because in a shrunken GOP the ultras make up a much larger percentage of the party.

The truth though is that taxes and fiscal policy, while key issues for conservatives, simply aren't visceral and divisive in anywhere near the way race and gender are. So while this schism has been there for months, the Sotomayor battle -- still only three days old -- has thrown gasoline on the fire and intensified the rift dramatically.

Battles between "pragmatists" and "ideologues" are not unusual - they probably exist within every political party in every country. Many progressives recall the famous fights within the German Greens between the realists (realos) and fundamentalists (fundis).

For Republicans, it's a battle between Big Mouths (led by Rush) and Big Money (led by the Bush Mafia, whose capo di tutti capi is now Jeb Bush.)

Usually the "pragmatists" have an edge in these battles. Pragmatists usually win because they have more staying power. Ideologues are usually hot-tempered and therefore burn out faster.

What's unusual about the current GOP battle is that the "ideologues" are vastly more powerful than the "pragmatists." It's not remotely an equal battle - it's a rout.

For all his many flaws, Rush isn't the burnout type. He lives for ideological warfare and thrives on it. Not only does he get an Olympic-size ego boost every single day, he also makes a fortune. And the more attention he gets, the more he makes. So if Rush is at the center of an argument, he can never lose by definition. Instead he gets to laugh all the way to the bank.

And the joke is on the Republican Party, which will always lose.

If empathy wasn't a thought crime, I could almost empathize with the poor GOP...