Has state’s GOP ever before been this crazy?

There’s something about driving over a cliff that makes it seem like a one-time thing.

And in real life, with real cliffs, it is. In politics, however, there seem to be an infinite number of escarpments and an infinite number of Thelmas and Louises willing to motor off the nearest precipice.

That’s what happened when the Arizona Republican Party reelected Kelli Ward as the state chairperson and then voted to censure Cindy McCain, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Gov. Doug Ducey.

Over the edge the party went, into the abyss.

Again.

Crazy isn’t anything new to the Arizona GOP.

Back in the 1990s a kooky segment of the party turned on Barry Goldwater.

Yes, that Barry Goldwater.

The Barry Goldwater. In those days the founder of the modern conservative movement, then retired from the Senate, continued to do what he always had done: Speak his mind.

When then President Bill Clinton proposed lifting the ban on gays in the military Goldwater wrote an essay for The Washington Post that read in part:

“If I were in the Senate today, I would rise on the Senate floor in support of our commander in chief. He may be a Democrat, but he happens to be right on this question.”

As he had done all his professional life, the former senator argued against government intrusion into the private lives of citizens.

Goldwater said it was “high time to pull the curtains on this charade of policy,” then he added what would be his most famous quote on the subject, “You don’t need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.”

During that same general time period Goldwater also said Congress should lay off Clinton concerning his involvement in something called the Whitewater land development, an ongoing obsession with Republicans in Congress.

In Arizona, Republicans went on the attack.

Goldwater was “starting to sound like he’s lost it,” said one prominent party member.

Others called him “an embarrassment” and said he was “becoming a joke.”

Over the cliff they went.

To which Goldwater replied, “You know something, I don’t give a damn.”

The late Sen. John McCain went through the same stuff with the AZ GOP.

More than once. Most recenty with President Donald Trump. But it didn’t begin there.

Over the years, McCain reached

across the aisle, for which local Republicans wanted to cut off his hand.

As far back as 2001 protesters heckled the senator when he invited thenSen Tom Daschle, a Democrat, to a barbecue at his place near Sedona.

When the late Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords from Vermont switched to independent there was considerable consternation among Republicans, some of it aimed at McCain for not condemning Jeffords.

To which John McCain said, “Tolerance of dissent is the hallmark of a mature party, and it is well past time for the Republican Party to grow up.”

Apparently, the AZ GOP’s prepubescent stage lasts a long, time.