The GOP Is Tearing Itself Apart

http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-heilemann-2012-3/

THE LOST PARTY
By John Heilemann

EXCERPT: The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist. The result has been a party divided along the lines of culture and class: Establishment versus grassroots, secular versus religious, upscale versus downscale, highfalutin versus hoi polloi.

That Mitt Romney finds himself so imperiled by Rick Santorum—Rick Santorum!—is just the latest in a series of jaw-dropping developments in what has been the most volatile, unpredictable, and just plain wackadoodle Republican-nomination contest ever.