Everyone at the Club thinks Santorum is nuts. But he is white.
I have a few friends and colleagues who still call themselves Republicans. They aren't wackos (for the most part), and they don't think about politics much. Most of them copulate for the enjoyment of it, and don't really care if you do the same. They come from the class that is accustomed to voting for the GOP, assuming that the Party will continue to represent their economic interests.
They blandly dismiss the perennial cast of GOP candidates that want to crawl into your bedroom (well, not theirs; it would be awkward at the next Club board meeting). They know that the stalwarts will always be there for them. You know, the Olympia Snowes, etc.
They dismiss as aberrations the David Dukes, Sam Brownbacks, Al Joneses. (Had do search the google cache for the Duke link from 10/31/2011; apparently the Zionist Hordes got to him.)
When an aberrations' base becomes the base that the so-called mainstream candidates are pandering too (must pander to), you have to stop pretending that this GOP is what you think it is. It is not the nice, quiet, polite racism of your fathers. It is the open attack on women, minorities, the poor coming from a desperate group of the very wealthy and the racists they have co-opted into voting for them, despite the clash of economic needs.
Those who lead the GOP can no longer pretend that the "polite" crowd of adults is in charge, not when they are voting for bills that would limit access to contraception, not when they fail to condemn the Rush Limbaughs who consider it akin to the government paying for prostitution.
The GOP is the party of the Theocratic Right, the Libertarian Better-Be-Superman-or-Die crowd, and the Job Creator Billionaires who have never been proven to transmogrify a tax break into a job.
If you really believe your party is the Party of Lincoln, you are quite literally living in the past.
(I screwed up my links. If you need one and really can't find it on your own, drop me a line.)