Senior Republicans have appealed to right-wing talk show hosts led by Rush Limbaugh to call off their vitriolic attacks on the party's presidential frontrunner, John McCain, for fear that they will fatally damage his chances of taking the White House in November.
Bob Dole, the Republican presidential candidate in 1996 and a former leader of the party in the Senate, has written to Limbaugh pleading with him to lend his support to Mr McCain should the senator for Arizona win the nomination.
Mr Dole implied that Limbaugh's persistent carping could let the Democrats back into the White House. "McCain is a friend and I proudly wore his POW bracelet bearing his name while he was still a guest at the 'Hanoi Hilton'," Mr Dole wrote, alluding to their shared experiences as military veterans.
The talk show host, who broadcasts to 600 radio stations around the country, is an influential voice in Republican circles who helped to rally support behind Newt Gingrich's 1990s "conservative revolution". He is renowned as a controversialist, but his increasingly intemperate attacks on Mr McCain have led to speculation that he could help to break up the coalition of religious and economic conservatives put together by Ronald Reagan.
Limbaugh told the Washington Post that he would rather see a Democrat win in November than Mr McCain. "If I believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain, I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit rather than a Republican causing the debacle." Even sharper criticism has come from Ann Coulter, the talk show host who has built her reputation on speaking the unthinkable. She has said that if Mr McCain takes the Republican nomination she will campaign on behalf of Ms Clinton, on the grounds that she is more of a conservative than he is.
"I will campaign against John McCain until Inauguration Day, which, God willing, will not be his," she told the conservative website Newsmax.
Michael Tanner, an analyst at the right-leaning Cato Institute in Washington, said that the argument was about the future of the party. "The stakes go well beyond this election - the party has lost any sense of its core principles and that's why there is so much bad blood between different factions."
Limbaugh, Coulter and their stable-mate radio hosts Seán Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt and Lars Larson object to Mr McCain because of his record of advocating policies that run counter to the hard-core principles of right-wing conservatives.
They point in particular to his vote against George Bush's initial tax cuts, his support for some degree of legalisation of undocumented immigrants, his sponsorship of legislation to control political campaign funding, his opposition to the use of torture against terror suspects and his call for action to stem global warming.
Their denunciations have been picked up and repeated by Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who is Mr McCain's main rival. He has been echoing claims that Mr McCain is a liberal in conservative clothing.
Mr McCain has notably tacked to the right since the start of the primary nomination process, in an attempt to assuage fears about his neo-liberalism among core party members. Mr Dole pointed out in his Limbaugh letter that Mr McCain is a life-long anti-abortionist, has been consistently pro-gun and is a staunch exponent of tough national security.
Mr McCain's victory in Florida last month, in a race closed to non-registered party members, was widely seen as evidence that he can rally all but the most die-hard conservatives to his cause.
Senior Republican figures are hoping that Super Tuesday will give Mr McCain an unassailable lead, thus ending the damaging in-fighting about the party's direction. - (Guardian service)