When I hear people talking about the troubled state of today’s Republican Party, it calls to mind something Lester Maddox said one time back when he was governor of Georgia.  He said the problem with Georgia prisons was “the quality of the inmates.” The problem with the Republican Party is the quality of the people who vote in their primaries and caucuses. Everybody says they need a better candidate, or they need a better message but — in my opinion — the Republicans have an inmate problem.

Slightly more sympathetic, my colleague Stan compares the Republicans to an “endangered species.” But we agree that the strange political obsessions of the Republican base — from denying global warming to defending assault weapons — continue to doom any moderate politicians within their party.  How should Democrats seize the political opportunity created by Republican extremism?