This post from Rachel Lucas illustrates a classic ideological battle within the Right -- the Christian vs. Libertarian Right (also often characterized as Paleo- vs Neo- conservatism). 

Rachel brushes with this divide here (in reference to the nomination of Jerry "gay plague" Thacker to join the AIDS commission):

If you want to find out who really likes you and who only pretends to like you because you write about guns and how much you hate Al Gore, write something about how you don't think homosexuality is wrong.

In other words, I am happy to report that I have been unburdened of the "friendship" of a few people who are so freakishly right-wing they can't see straight (no pun intended) because I "came out" (pun intended) in support of the idea that there is nothing wrong with gay people, and in the process, I committed the mortal sin (pun intended) of mentioning the Bible in a critical way.

Let's not forget another, recent instance of this discord within the Right -- the Trent Lott affair.   Some of the most vocal players calling for his step down weren't from the Left (no doubt they had the voice/mindset, they just weren't that effective) but rather from within the Republican party itself. 

The Left and it's constituents take a very cynical view of this fact though.   They secretly believe that the Lott affair shows the Right's true colors.  And that those colors are uniform.   They believe that the dominant motive of the Right in this house cleaning was simply a shallow attempt to cater to the reality of the growing minority vote.   Thus, they fundamentally doubt the intellectual authenticity of a Right winger who's also anti-racial or anti-gay discrimination.

I can pretty easily imagine how my left-leaning friends view this quote from the administration as a result of the Thacker affair:

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer issued a stern rebuke of Thacker's remarks... "The views that he holds are far, far removed from what the president believes," Fleischer said. "The president has a total opposite view. ... The president's view is that people with AIDS need to be treated with care, compassion."

They picture the central-planning committee of the Right Wing Conspiracy secretly banging their fists and saying "dangit, we almost managed to slip one through; quick!  call the spin doctors!"

But unless we-the-Right make this division within the movement more recognized and understood, both halves fall victim to this type of opportunistic carping by the Left.  If they can't find a paleo-esque reason to carp on the Right ("they're a bunch of latent racists!"), they look for a neo one ("they don't care about the little people!").   

And guilt by association also reigns supreme ("so-and-so supports discrimination and lower taxes; you support lower taxes ergo....").   Eddie Thomas noted in a thoughtful comment on an earlier post that a form of this association likely drives much of the current US / European divide:

...Part of the reason the left regularly misunderstands conservatives is because they are such Europhiles. Consequently they critique conservatives in America the way the European liberal political order would critique the conservatives of Europe. The problem is that they bear little resemblance of one another. (European conservatives, for example, are much more interested in race as a form of political identity than American conservatives.) If the left were to develop their political sensibilities from an understanding of the American Founding and subsequent American political philosophy, rather than importing the local European fads, this problem would occur less and political debate would be more meaningful.

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