I have covered some of this angst in articles here.

One of those was from a couple of days ago, when it became apparent that the GOP was in no rush to elect a Speaker of the House.

 GRUDGE MATCH: House Republicans Once Again Decide on Not Electing a Speaker

From that article...

Maybe the United States House of Representatives doesn't really need a Speaker of the House. 

Maybe the members all know something that the rest of us don't because we are now into the second week of a speakerless house, and there seems to be no rush to get somebody the gavel to replace Kevin McCarthy.

Speaking of Kevin, if you turn your head and face the east, you can hear in the wind his soft laughing, that it wasn't really him after all, was it?

When Speaker Pro tem Patrick Henry moments ago slammed down the gavel in frustration to end the second attempt to install Jim Jordan of Ohio as Speaker, it signaled the beginning of a full-fledged Grudge Match among House Republicans. 

My colleague Teri Christoph may have had a crystal ball earlier when she wrote this piece Jim Jordan May Not Become the Next Speaker, So What's Next? 

From that article...

There doesn't seem to be a lot of "Jim-mentum" going into today's second vote for Speaker of the House.

As we reported yesterday, Jim Jordan fell short of the 217 votes needed to secure the speaker's gavel, with twenty members of the GOP conference peeling off and casting their votes for other Republicans. Former speaker Kevin McCarthy received a few votes, as did Steve Scalise, who dropped out of the speaker's race last week, but now doesn't seem inclined to help Jordan get the votes needed to win.

Some of the anti-Jordan faction of the House GOP made their feelings abundantly clear following yesterday's vote. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), who is not running for reelection and is perhaps feeling free to stir up some chaos, tweeted this after casting her vote for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY):

Some people are ticked off that Matt Gaetz did the original motion to vacate the chair, and some people are mad that Kevin McCarthy did not allegedly keep his promises made back in January. And now it seems everybody's mad at somebody about something that has been done at some time, that the vast majority of the public has no idea about.

In some states, the GOP does not even have a functioning party -- like here in my home state of Michigan. Michigan GOP Struggles to Find a Way to Raise Money, but Their New Scheme Won't Work

Well, the party is so busted and broke, they are ticked off about people talking about it and now, if you do, they are gonna get ya -- which this story talked about right here

Michigan Republican Party officials have been distributing non-disclosure agreement forms that ask people to pledge confidentiality about internal party information and that say violators are subject to "a legal monetary penalty that is equal to $150,000."

The Detroit News obtained a copy of one of the party's secrecy agreements on Friday, a week after The News reported on the party's bank records, which revealed the state GOP, led by new chairwoman Kristina Karamo, had about $35,000 in its accounts in early August.

Past Michigan Republican Party officials said the $35,000 tally was millions of dollars behind where the party should have been at that point ahead of a presidential election.

So I think it suffices to say that across the fruited plain, the GOP in all of its iterations is divided just as the country is divided as a whole. This of course does not bode well for the country because if you don't have a functioning somewhat united opposition party to what the Democrats and Progressives are trying to do, they will win by default.

So is there a Uniter in Chief walking amongst us right now?

No, it is not Donald Trump, and probably not anyone else running against Trump.

I'm looking at more of a historical example, like the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, between the years 1976 and 1982.

Reagan at that time was a former, popular governor of the nation's most populous state California, and decided to run as a Republican against a sitting Republican President Gerald Ford in 1976.

Reagan ran as a true conservative to the right of Ford, who was always more moderate during his time in the House of Representatives representing Michigan. Reagan's campaign was effective enough that he almost wrestled the nomination from Ford in 1976 at the Kansas City Convention. 

After Ford lost the general election to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan started laying out the plans for him to run as a true conservative in 1980.

The moderate base, or the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party, could not stand Reagan for what he did to Ford. They considered him a lightweight and underestimated him the whole time. When Reagan ran in 1980 against Carter and a third-party candidate by the name of John Anderson, the Gipper won both the popular vote and the electoral vote. He made enough of an impression on the electorate that with a Democratic-controlled Congress, he was still able to get some of his plans through.

The moderate wing of the GOP figured that Reagan would fail right up until the 1982 election but after that, things changed. Reaganomics began to take effect, and the country began to see its fortunes turn around. 

The rumors of a moderate Republican running against a Republican President, much like what Reagan did to Ford in 1976, died down to a whimper; Ronald Reagan went on to win in a historic fashion in 1984 while winning 49 of 50 states. The moderate opposition of the GOP went and sat in the back of the bus, and rode the train of the Reagan Revolution for 20 years thereafter. 

Furthermore, the country was united behind Reagan. President Regan's approval rating weeks before he left office was at 63 percent thumbs up, with 29 percent disapproving.

Do we have another Ronald Reagan walking among us to do the same things that he did -- in equally troubling times in this nation's history, or is that from an era that no longer exists in today's culture?

I certainly have my doubts, but I wonder what your thoughts are. Scroll down to the bio, where you can find all the ways that you can contact me and let me know.