Why do Republicans eat their own? Identity politics...

[kaz]

And controlling the Republican party, he got HW nominated again in 1992 and Dole in 1996? Your argument is pretty good ... that he didn't control the Republican Party ...

Presidential Clinton term: January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001 HW/ Dole lost to Clinton in 1996

And that shows the religious right controlled the Republican party ... how?

• • Jane DevinCultural critic, essayist, and author
  
  
  When Ronald Reagan began courting the religious right in his bid to win the Presidency, I doubt he knew he was spelling death to the lean tenets of Goldwaterconservatism. Yet soon afterward, under the thumb of right-wing religion, the Republican party became a bloated fool, stuffed with hypocrisy, greed, and anti-intellectualism. In 2008, the price is being paid through lost elections and a loss of public trust.
  
  While Bush railed about the axis of evil, there was another axis that gathered steam during the Reagan years. The Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and The Christian Coalition were all formed within years of each other as religiopolitical groups. Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson, the respective leaders of these movements, formed a triad that sought to influence politics through a gospel of neo-conservative Christian rhetoric aimed at millions of faithful adherents whose votes, it was hoped, could swing the socio-political pendulum away from progress and back to “traditional values.”
  
  In order to win the votes of the triad’s faithful followers, Republican politicians bartered themselves into a hear-no-wrong, see-no-wrong trade-off. This trade-off allowed Falwell to hold sway with politicians, and appear as a respected political pundit on right-wing shows, even after outlandishly insisting that the purple Tinky Winky children’s character was gay, or that the anti-Christ was coming in the form of a Jew. He could promote the idea of ending the public school system in favor of church-run schools, as he did in his book, America Can Be Saved, yet still wield considerable influence in Washington.
  
  In trading endorsements for blindness, Pat Robertson could say that feminism “is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians” — and even suggest that a nuclear device should be used to blow up the State Department — yet Senators and other politicians would still appear on his CBN network, even after other controversies, such as the use of Operation Blessing planes for mining activities, splintered his Coalition.

When Ronald Reagan began courting the religious right in his bid to win the Presidency, I doubt he knew he was spelling death to the lean tenets of Goldwaterconservatism. Yet soon afterward, under the thumb of right-wing religion, the Republican party became a bloated fool, stuffed with hypocrisy, greed, and anti-intellectualism. In 2008, the price is being paid through lost elections and a loss of public trust.

While Bush railed about the axis of evil, there was another axis that gathered steam during the Reagan years. The Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and The Christian Coalition were all formed within years of each other as religiopolitical groups. Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson, the respective leaders of these movements, formed a triad that sought to influence politics through a gospel of neo-conservative Christian rhetoric aimed at millions of faithful adherents whose votes, it was hoped, could swing the socio-political pendulum away from progress and back to “traditional values.”

In order to win the votes of the triad’s faithful followers, Republican politicians bartered themselves into a hear-no-wrong, see-no-wrong trade-off. This trade-off allowed Falwell to hold sway with politicians, and appear as a respected political pundit on right-wing shows, even after outlandishly insisting that the purple Tinky Winky children’s character was gay, or that the anti-Christ was coming in the form of a Jew. He could promote the idea of ending the public school system in favor of church-run schools, as he did in his book, America Can Be Saved, yet still wield considerable influence in Washington.

In trading endorsements for blindness, Pat Robertson could say that feminism “is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians” — and even suggest that a nuclear device should be used to blow up the State Department — yet Senators and other politicians would still appear on his CBN network, even after other controversies, such as the use of Operation Blessing planes for mining activities, splintered his Coalition.

Begging the question. The question is why these religious nut jobs who you claim controlled the party kept picking non-religious tax and spend liberal republican candidates. Not that hard a question, apparently it's hard to answer though ...

Reagan courted them for sure, but he did zero for them. He showed the Republicans how to do it. Talk about your personal social conservatism, focus on other issues in office. Cruz seems very much in that mold. When he talks to socons, he woos them. When he's in any other environment he talks about fiscal issues.

I'm not saying they can be ignored for sure, but you claimed Republicans were "in love" with them and were controlled by them. A contention you can't back up. I'm not a socon, in fact I'm extremely socially liberal, far more than the Democrat party. And I left the Republican party then. But it sure wasn't for socon issues, it was for the tax and spend liberal issue