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During the election, extremist Republicans tried to win by preventing people from voting. By inventing voter fraud and other complications. It only made minorities angrier. The Economist of 9 February 2013 said,

The problem for the party is that it continues a defensive, backward-looking, and ultimately losing strategy of the last election in which Republicans tried to keep non-whites voters from voting rather than engaging with them. Instead of trying to thwart the popular vote, Republicans might be a lot better off trying to win it.

Reagan's 11th Commandment said, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican". But the party's extremist situation has become scary. From The Economist of 14 February 2013,

On the face of it party grandees and anti-establishment groups - such as the Club for Growth or sundry tea party outfits - are arguing about races that were lost in 2010 and 2012.

The establishment points to candidates backed by outside groups who threw away winnable races, notably in the Senate. The list is extensive. In Delaware in 2010 there was Christine O'Donnell, an erratic pro-chastity activist whose tea-fuelled campaign at one point ran TV ads denying that she was a witch. In Missouri in 2012 there was Todd Akin, a fierce social conservative whose campaign imploded after he claimed - against all medical evidence - that women subjected to what he called "legitimate rape" rarely fall pregnant, because their bodies have ways to "shut that whole thing down".

... the establishment (most prominently in the form of a new fighting fund backed by Karl Rove, ...) has started looking for new, Akin-style troublemakers. Steven Law, the head of the new Rove-backed fighting fund, the Conservative Victory Project, has named Steve King - an anti-immigration hardliner from the House of Representatives who is pondering a Senate run in Iowa - as someone with a "Todd Akin problem". Mr King's antics include building a model border fence in the House chamber (electrified, he noted: as we do "with livestock"), and calling immigration a "slow-motion terrorist attack".

Another fighting fund, run by the centrist Republican Main Street Partnership, says it will intervene in primaries to defend moderates - or what its boss Steve LaTourette ... from Ohio, calls the "governing wing of the Republican Party". ... the Main Street fund is looking at the House primary in South Carolina's first district, where ... Mark Sanford, a disgraced former governor, [is] launching a come-back bid.

... the candidacy of Paul Broun, a member of the House of Representatives, physician and big-game hunter, who argues that President Barack Obama is a Marxist bent on destroying the free enterprise system. Mr Broun ... was filmed telling a group of Baptist hunting enthusiasts that, looking back on years of scientific training, he had come to realise that: "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell." Despite some sniggering in the national and international press, Mr Broun cruised to re-election, though ... 4000 locals reportedly wrote in the name of Charles Darwin on their ballot papers.

... the real fight underway within the Republican Party is still more vicious:

... establishment Republicans and insurgents broadly share the goal of avoiding Akin-style losers. Their really poisonous disagreement involves Akin-style winners. Before he was undone ... Mr Akin was a six-term member of the House of Representatives, maintaining a posture of insurgency via hardline votes and clashes with party leaders. He won his last House election with 68% of the vote. It is the collective power wielded by Republicans from such safe districts and their distaste for compromise (strongly reinforced by fears of primary challenges if their purity wavers), that really divides establishment Republicans from the insurgent right ...

... the Karl Roves ... could also be charged with hypocrisy, as they throw their hands up in horror at candidates like Mr Akin. After all, Mr Rove and his like once embraced the same religious forces that empowered Mr Akin, using gay-marriage ballots and other gimmicks to drive up Republican turnout at the 2004 election, blurring divisions between social and economic conservatives in ways that still harm the party among centrist voters.

Moving on to Reuters on 14 Feb 2013, freshman Texas Senator Cruz:

... has suggested that Hagel's nomination was endorsed by Iran, and that Hagel was not being forthcoming enough about his finances.

Before the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee voted to back Hagel's confirmation on Tuesday on a party-line, 14-11 vote, Cruz angered lawmakers in both parties by suggesting, without giving evidence, that Hagel might have taken money from countries such as North Korea.

That drew a rebuke from Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who said Cruz had "gone over the line."

It also prompted a warning to Cruz from a fellow Republican, John McCain of Arizona, ...

"No one on this committee at any time should impugn his character or his integrity," McCain said of Hagel, a fellow veteran of the Vietnam War.

In reply to a Ryan Paul question, John Brennan suggested a drone might be necessary to avert another WTC type attack. Paul, a tea party extremist, intentionally misrepresented his answer to claim Brennan advocates using drones on the students at Kent State, patrons in a cafe, or Jane Fonda.

Well Republican moderates had enough. Senators McCain and Graham openly confronted Ryan's foolishness. Graham said Ryan's antics cause him to change his vote; to vote for Brennan.

A war to save the Republican party from wackos has become public. Campaign funds are established so that Republicans can campaign against other Republicans. A violation of a Reagan principle. Because extremist ideology has replaced adult thinking.