> I think we might be getting hung up on the difference between what views
> are held by the "majority" of the party and what views rule the party.
BTW, I'm not claiming that the GOP doesn't have far fewer moderates now than it did in the 50s or 60s or 70s. I'm saying it's been a movement from 55% far righters to 90%, not from a minority to a majority. And most of that movement has come from the re-structuring of party territory as opposed to their ideological conversion, most centrally the movement of the South from Dems to the Repugs.
That return of the South to what was always its natural ideological home by itself made the Dems much more liberal and the Repugs much more conservative and both of them much less like each other. All other factors are secondary.
Michael