Red on Red Warfare [UPDATED]

Democrat.
(AP photo)

Why do Republicans hate the GOP? David Harsanyi knows:

It’s conceivable, and I’m just spitballing here, that many conservatives are wondering: If the Republican Party is incapable or unwilling to make a compelling case against the selling of baby organs or the emergence of a nuclear Iran or the funding of a cronyist state-run bank—or all three—then really, what exactly can it do?

Setting aside presidential politics for a moment, three issues have filled the conservative ether the past few weeks: The administration’s pact abetting Iran’s efforts to become a threshold nuclear power, Planned Parenthood’s organ harvesting controversy, and, to a lesser extent, the renewal of the Export-Import bank. None of these are hobbyhorses of the wild fringe. These are issues—ostensibly, at least—that strike at the heart of the modern GOP. And on all three, Republican leadership have, though they held plenty of leverage to raise a stink, capitulated. In fact, they have probably put more effort into evading confrontation than their standard response of pretending to court it.

That last part is key.

Mitch McConnell didn’t put up the good fight and lose — he fought for, and got, wins for the other side. He got called on it by Ted Cruz and a few others, but the GOP leadership was largely silent, acquiescent. In fact, McConnell went further than that. He used the Senate rules last weekend to ensure that the Democrats would win on two grassroots issues, and that his own side wouldn’t even have the chance to be heard.

The only conclusion you can draw is that the GOP leadership believes in, or is at least amenable to major Democrat positions on abortion funding, foreign policy, and crony capitalists.

So what’s an opposition party for, if not to at the very least put up a pretense of opposition? Instead, you have an opposition party whose Senate leadership has been coopted by the other side.

The case for term limits has never been clearer.

MORE: Mark Levin (H/T Glenn) went to Facebook to call for self-term limits on McConnell and Boehner. Here’s what he said:

It is time for Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to resign for the good of the nation and the Republican Party. The nation and GOP are both suffering as a result of the unwillingness or inability of McConnell and Boehner to effectively defend either. Instead, these politicians are consumed with consolidating their own power on Capitol Hill and silencing opponents who dare to challenge their ironfisted rule. Sadly, they rarely act in the best interests of America’s future. Indeed, time and again they have delivered victory after victory for Obama and his radical agenda — from spending, borrowing, and Obamacare to illegal immigration, Iran and “trade” power. Never before has a Congress controlled by one party been so thoroughly impotent. This is due to the disastrous leadership of McConnell and Boehner. It is time for younger, wiser, and more courageous Republican leadership — constitutional conservatives who understand the role of a statesman in perilous times — who are willing to truly lead the nation and the Republican Party based on America’s enlightened principles, advance the cause of liberty and republican government, and make the case everyday to the American people.

It will never happen, of course. Boehner and McConnell are fully creatures of the system they were sent to Washington to fight against. They haven’t been coopted so much as they’ve been assimilated by the Borg collective.