Democratic strategist Paul Begala on Sunday asserted that infighting between different factions of Republicans appeared just to be “Neanderthals fighting with Cro-Magnons” as the party lunged further and further to the right.

During a panel discussion on CNN, Democratic Pollster Cornell Belcher said that internal arguments about policies like National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance showed that Republicans were having difficulty reacting to social change in America.

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“Unfortunately for us in Congress right now, you have this civil war unfolding in Congress and it’s making Congress completely dysfunctional,” Belcher explained. “America, your Congress does not work because of this civil war that’s going on.”

Begala added that the civil war also wasn’t working for the Republican Party politically.

“I checked, party identification — the percentage of Americans who call themselves Republicans — all-time low, lower than Watergate, only 21 percent say that they’re Republicans today,” Begala noted. “That’s a catastrophe.”

“Republicans have become more ideologically conservative, they’ve moved farther from the mainstream, and they’re more fractured,” he continued. “Usually when you become more extreme — more left in my party, more right in the Republicans’ — you at least get some cohesion. Here you have a much more conservative party than 20 years ago and a much more fractured party.”

“The Neanderthals are fighting with Cro-Magnons, the neoliths hate the paleoliths. It’s great. I love it as a Democrat.”

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Watch this video from CNN’s State of the Union, broadcast July 28, 2013.