There is little indication many GOP voters see it as you and most of the party leadership do; indeed, far less of the party leadership agrees specifically because the voters have replaced so many of its moderates with their fellow radicals. I almost pity Boehner; he is working hard to reach a budget compromise with Obama to salvage his partys last vestige of credibility with the public and, oh, btw, PREVENT THE US DECLARING BANKRUPTCY, and his fellow House Republicans are "rewarding" him by cutting the legs from beneath his budget bill and trying to yank the Speakers gavel from him. You are absolutely right about the way forward for the GOP, but I am not sure the base sees it. Just two years ago Rubio was a Tea Party darling; now he is the voice of reason trying to pull them back from the brink.

The problem, one Dem elder statesman know well, is that it is all well and good for the leaders to talk the moderate talk and even walk the walk, but if the voters insist on nominating radicals anyway it does not matter. It is not as simple as just ramming a soulless Romney or Kerry down their throats secure in the knowledge they will vote for the nominee just to prevent the other party winning. The GOP primary system is more conducive to it than the Dems (though not as much so as before the Dems set up Super Tuesday to minimize voter input in presidential nominations,) but the GOPs biggest asset is now proving something of an Achilles heel: Republican voters VOTE, consistently, rain or shine, and fairly monolithically. If they all show up and demand a radical, that is who will be nominated.

I honestly do not know how to feel about that. On the one hand, both wings of the GOP disgust me for different reasons, so part of me is happy to watch them shoot their own toes off one by one. On the other hand, the old GOP mantra that "if you stand for nothing you will fall for anything" contains a lot of truth. When the Dems turned their back on the left for the New/No Left to win elections, what did Dem voters and the nation get for it? We wound up sitting here 15 years later arguing whom is to blame for a NAFTA, WTO and Gramm-Leach-Blilely act both Congressional Republicans and the Democratic president eagerly enacted for the same reasons. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? What good is victory and consequent authority at the cost of forsaking the ultimate goals of both?

Since Dems trod that path a generation ago and Republicans must follow to remain viable, in a few years there may be NO ideologues, only partisans contesting who gets credit/blame for identical policy. Often, it has seemed like that is exactly what has happened throughout Obamas first term:

The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute reject Hillarycare and propose a national mandate for people to buy private insurance, but lambast their own proposal as socialism when a Dem president pushes it instead (while both parties incidentally dismiss ACTUAL socialized medicine.)

Big Business execs bankrupt feloniously bankrupt their own firms and Obama hands them a taxpayer bailout instead of sending them to jail, in the "finest" tradition of deregulated trickle down policy, but Republicans call it socialism.

Obama insists on preserving all the middle class tax breaks Gingrich fought for in the '90s and Bush in the aughts, and Republicans attack them as the reason 47% of America pays no taxes.

This is like Iran going to war with Israel over which one gets the privilege of bombing Palestine. I believe the line was, "Whether the bear beats the wolf or the wolf beats the bear, the rabbit always loses."

I doubt the GOP base will let cooler heads prevail; again, they show no sign of doing so. Most will never warm up to any immigration reform except border fences and deportation anyway, which is demographic suicide for the GOP. Bringing back total abortion bans is not where the country is at either, but is clearly where the GOP base is. Gay marriage is quickly moving toward the same paradigm. Third Way triangulation is not just about shedding a radical image, but jogging so far toward the center opposition is only possible from the edges, so Republicans face the unenviable choice of either conceding issues to No Left Dems (risking the bases wrath in the process) or drifting so far right they are marginalized.

Rather than a more moderate GOP, it may be more likely to expect that the next decades major parties will be the Dems and Libs, agreed on socially liberal issues and debating just how conservative our public programs, taxes and spending should be. Which might be just as well for you ideologically, if not partisanly.