Sociopolitical commentator Jonathan Chait comes up with a useful method of distinguishing the chaff from the nutballs in the Republican part -- with particular reference to the South.
Last night Mississippi Republicans voted in a Senate primary between incumbent Thad Cochran, a hard-line conservative who votes with his party on everything, and challenger Chris McDaniel, a hard-line conservative who will also vote with his party on everything but will say a bunch of crazy stuff as well. ...Chait,DailyIntel
Chait adds a particularly nice photo to illustrate his comments. He concludes that Democrats have nothing to gain here either way. That leaves us with "the only real question": "whether Mississippi’s Republican senator is a boring partisan or an entertainingly crazy one."
As Chait points out, it's the dominance of evangelical Christians that accounts for the quality of the politics and the inevitability of the political choice. We have learned that evangelicals manage to be both boring and crazy. I've noticed they qualify for even the strictest definition of the term "anti-American," too.