From left: Limbaugh, Schmidt and O'Reilly. | AP Photos Media fight on the right over GOP

Rush Limbaugh couldn’t have been more right.

Months before the election, the conservative radio host made a prediction: “If Obama wins, the Republican Party is going to try to maneuver things so conservatives get blamed.”


And that’s exactly what’s happening.

(Also on POLITICO: Full coverage of the war over the future of the GOP)

On the night of Nov. 6, shortly after President Barack Obama won reelection, Steve Schmidt went on NBC News and called on GOP leaders to “stand up” against the extreme elements in the party that the Republican strategist believes are leading it down the wrong path, even singling out Limbaugh by name. Days later on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough criticized Republicans for taking cues from unnamed pundits “who make tens of millions of dollars engaging in niche marketing” that the host complained provides a misleading picture of the nation’s electorate. Columnist David Frum last week slammed the “conservative entertainment complex” that had “fleeced, exploited and lied to” Republicans, ensuing doom on Election Day.

“These people have made politics a theater for identity politics for a segment of America, rather than a way to solve collective problems,” Frum told POLITICO, referring to conservative media commentators. “What is happening now, and it’s disturbing, is that this complex has sold the idea that conservatives are the real majority in America. That claim has been exposed as false. But they are turning on the country and leading their viewers toward alienation and rejection.”

( Also on POLITICO: Condi: GOP sent ‘mixed messages’)

These were the opening salvos in a larger and escalating civil war playing out now between moderate and far-right-wing pundits. After a disastrous performance in the 2012 elections, the Republican party has come face-to-face with the new demographic reality: “The white establishment is now the minority,” as Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said on election night. Republican support among old, white men can no longer offset their lack of support among women, the young, African-Americans, Asians and the fast-growing Hispanic populations — all key groups in Obama’s victory, some observers say.

But which path to take for the GOP toward broader appeal — doubling down on a core economic and family values conservative message that transcends identity politics or polishing the party’s image by recruiting more women and minority candidates and adopting more moderate positions, particularly on immigration reform — has exposed a sharp rift in the conservative media.

( PHOTOS: 20 quotes on immigration reform)

As moderates see it, the “conservative entertainment complex” of talk radio, Fox News, and right-wing blogs has an outsized and potentially fatal influence over the party, alienating Latinos with crass solutions to illegal immigration (“self-deportation”) and insulting women with disrespectful remarks about abortion and birth control.

“If you look at the Republican Party over the last couple of years, it is a tail-wag-the-dog story with the power and the influence of the conservative entertainment complex over elected leadership,” Schmidt, the senior campaign strategist on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, told POLITICO. “Ronald Reagan would have been appalled by this uncivil tone. Conservatism with a smile has appeal. Conservatism with a snarl is a voter repellent.”

Far from accepting this premise, the far right is retrenching.

The principles of conservatism are as strong as ever, they say, it’s just that an out-of-touch Massachusetts moderate like Mitt Romney didn’t know how to sell it. As a result, misinformed “entitlement mentality” voters looking for government handouts turned out for Obama. Conservatives certainly need to make a stronger case, they argue, but the last thing they should do is abandon their basic beliefs and “pander” to minority groups to win elections.

“Contrary to what the usual suspects on the Left and mushy middle are saying, Romney’s loss is not an indictment of conservatism,” Laura Ingraham, the conservative talk radio host and Fox News guest host, wrote on her blog.

“Conservative talk radio continues to thrive, moderate Republican candidates continue to lose,” Ingraham later told POLITICO. “Blaming talk radio for the problems in the GOP elite is hilarious and typical of people who want to continue to get paid to give bad advice to campaigns.”

( Also on POLITICO: Tea party leader: Stop blame game)

The very public argument under way — after all, the players have media platforms that give them a megaphone for their views — has significant implications for the future of the GOP. The right has a deep, diverse, and highly influential bench of opinion makers, and its pundits are moving to expand their influence in a sphere suffering from a lack of political leadership from its elected officials and organizational figures.

“There are no Republican party leaders,” John Podhoretz, the conservative New York Post columnist and editor of Commentary magazine, told POLITICO. “Leaders are self-appointed now.”

As long as figures like Limbaugh command large audiences and media attention, they can wield more power from their studios than many lawmakers can from Capitol Hill — which is part of the reason why so few Republicans spoke out against the radio show host when he called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke “a slut.” But it’s these and other controversial remarks — as when Limbaugh associates “appealing to Latinos” with “illegal immigration,” or “appealing to women” with “abortion and birth control” — that have GOP media moderates calling for a different approach.

“For too many swing voters, conservatism has come to mean crazy statements, intolerence and loony candidates — and too often, the elected leadership is afraid of a talk radio industry where the hosts define who is and is not a conservative,” said Schmidt.

“When people in politics had real connections with voters … 15 minutes of Rush Limbaugh — a little porn never hurt anybody,” Frum said. “But when he becomes the king-maker of the party, then you have a problem.”

Indeed, after election night, it was conservative pundits, not lawmakers and party powerbrokers, who led the charge this week for a more tolerant immigration policy. Charles Krauthammer, the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, said Wednesday that “Republicans can change their position, be a lot more open to actual amnesty with enforcement — amnesty, everything short of citizenship — and make a bold change in their policy.” In a surprise move that drew widespread notice among conservatives, Fox News host Sean Hannity went a step further the next day, telling his wide audience of radio listeners that his views on immigration have “evolved” and he now supports a “pathway to citizenship.”

But if demographics are forcing the right’s hand on what Krauthammer calls “the Latino problem,” he and others — Hannity, Limbaugh, and Ingraham included — remain staunchly opposed to the suggestion that demographic changes and Republican losses in 2012 require those on the right to slide toward the middle.

“[Republicans] lose and immediately the chorus begins,”Krauthammer wrote in a column on Thursday. “Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority. The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics.”

“The usual suspects are out, and they’re saying, ‘Rush, we gotta reach out now to the Hispanics and reach out to the minorities, blacks,’” Limbaugh said on his radio program last week. “Everybody says that we need to reach out to minorities, but we have plenty of highly achieved minorities in our party, and they are in prominent positions, and they all have a common story.”

Romney’s failure, Limbaugh argued, wasn’t because of the far right. It was because of this: Obama “successfully painted Romney’s policies as caring primarily about the rich … successfully convinced roughly half the country that his policies will favor the middle class,” the radio show host said.

Ingraham’s staff made a similar argument on her blog. “Are the defeats the fault of the GOP and its candidates, and do they now need to pander to minorities and update their platform to make it more appealing?” they wrote. “What exactly is wrong with conservative principles? Anything? No. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We don’t need to change to appeal to voters. We need voters and their mindsets to change.”

Behind the right’s retrenchment is a belief that they shouldn’t “pander” to those demographic groups that voted heavily for Obama simply because, some of those on the right claim, many of the president’s supporters were drawn by the promise of continued government handouts.

“The voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff,” O’Reilly said on election night. “You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

(Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Krauthammer and Hannity could not be reached for comment.)

“Until the entitlement mentality is destroyed, the Democratic Party of Redistribution will always win,” Ingraham’s staff wrote on her blog. “If voters put the good of the country ahead of their personal wants, they will see everyone benefiting, themselves included. Let’s implement some trickle-down patriotism before it’s too late.”

Frum, Schmidt, and other Republican moderates see this rhetoric as poisonous and, more importantly, false.

“The federal government spends seven times as much money on people over 65 as it does on people under 19. The Republican base are the people who get the most from the federal government,” Frum said. “You can’t think if you reject facts. You can’t refer to minority groups as mendicants or moochers simply because they want the economy to function. We need to insult fewer people.”

“When Gen. Petraeus took over Iraq, he said his goal was to wake up every morning with fewer enemies and more friends. Our goal should be to wake up with more friends and less opponents,” Schmidt said. “Political parties should not be in the business of picking fights with the gay community, we should not be picking fights with Latinos. We should talk about how the free enterprise system works. We should make a value statement about conservatism, that our path is the best way to advance your family and community.”

Podhoretz described “a middle path between Steve Schmidt and Rush Limbaugh.”

“If you look at all the data, close to half of the U.S. considers itself pro-life. It’s nonsensical to argue that positions that stand at a parity with their opposing views should be eliminated from the national stage — it’s a perverse idea, and it won’t happen,” he argued. “That’s not the way things are. This is a representative system, and those voices will be heard, not silenced.”

But, he added, “The ultimate truth about this election is that if you do things that convince voters you are deliberately insulting them, then they are not going to like you. Middle ground means holding firm to basic principles while finding a way to talk about them that will not only appeal to more people but will actually convey the justice, moral power, strength and elevating quality of these ideas.”

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, who now hosts his own radio show, echoed the sentiment.

“The real conservative policy is attractive to minorities,” Huckabee told POLITICO. “Our problem isn’t the product, it’s the box we put it in. Our message should not be ‘tailored’ to a specific demographic group, but presented to empower the individual American, whatever the color, gender or ethnicity.”