The Unitary national Republican Party

The Republican Party is becoming more like European political parties. Here is an example:

"it may be an emerging pattern of ascent, something like the traditional European parties of the left, where you got to be the guy running for office in your forties by spending your twenties and your thirties working as a party employee, staffing district offices, running local elections. For at least a few Republicans, the model of how to get ahead now seems similar. This seems to me to be something reasonably new,"

from The Political Animal

Combine this with the methods of using lobbyists to direct corporate money to political operations as described in the K-Street Project, the set of think tanks that put out pretested and focus-grouped political messages designed to shift the public perception before a candidate has to choose which parts to deliver, and the wholly-owned political news organizations represented by the Moonie Times, the Weekly Standard and FOX 'News' and you see a single nation-wide highly ideological party that has the sole function of gaining total power in America.

The Republican extremists have come a long way since the 1964 Goldwater debacle.