On Friday night's edition of "The Rachel Maddow Show," host Rachel Maddow talked about whether or not the Republican Party is going to shake off its current wave of dysfunctional craziness or try to jettison the far-right tea party element that is dragging the party lower and lower in the public eye.
She began by reporting that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is currently campaigning in Iowa, more than two years before the Republican 2016 primaries even begin.
"The last presidential race was less than a year ago," Maddow said. "There's another really big, nationwide election that has to happen between now and the next presidential race."
But even as Cruz throws his hat into the ring, Iowa's Gov. Terry Branstad (R) is trying to remake the GOP from within, to pull the party out from under the control of rabid social conservatives and make it a modern, electorally viable party.
This has set Iowa's Republicans on each other in an internecine battle that could carry all the way up through the Iowa caucuses for 2016.
The Iowa party's prime fundraiser, Diane Crookham Johnson, has left the Republican Party because she is pro-choice, meaning that Iowa Republicans' fundraising is down by double digits since the 2012 election.
Maddow went on to discuss how in Texas, far-right conservatives like Cruz are set to make it expensive and difficult to the point of impossibility for a woman to obtain a legal abortion. Now, women on the Texas-Mexico border cross into Mexico to get abortion drugs rather than struggle with the complicated mess of laws dreamed up by the state's Republicans.
What's happening now, she said, is that the GOP is going to have to figure out whether its commitment to right-wing social issues is the most important item on its roster as a party, even as moderates leave the fold.
Watch the video, embedded below via MSNBC:
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