This split is on temperament, not ideology, as all of the parties claim to want the same thing. This is the Tea Party vs. the Tea Party, Tea Party governors vs. some Tea Party members in Congress.

Or the Governing Party (what Pete Wehner calls the Reality Caucus), which deals with the real world, vs. the Grandstanding or Tooth Fairy Caucus, which deals with the world it wants and thinks that if it wants something to happen badly enough, then it will.

What matters to members of the Tooth Fairy Caucus aren’t the facts on the ground but the intensity of the will that they bring to bear on them. Like people trying to bend spoons with their minds, Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah said they could bend the Democrats in the Senate to turn against Obamacare, which didn’t happen, while they shattered their party and distracted the country from the other, more welcome, diversion, which is that the Affordable Health Care Act is falling apart…

This does leave an opening, however, for the likes of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who can live in the real world while being a rebel; and one as big as a truck for a Tea Party governor who could triangulate brilliantly between Cruz and Obama and present a conservative model that wins.