Maine Republicans to G.O.P.: You're Too Liberal Thirteen leaders of the Maine Republican Party announced this week that they were leaving the party in protest of its current path. One might assume that they'd finally had enough with Tea Party nihilism, or the preference for ideology over governing, or indifference to the poor, women's rights, immigrants and the environment. But no. They're leaving because they think the Republican Party has been too restrictive of Americans" gun rights. That's right, too restrictive. Because Speaker John Boehner has cracked down too hard on conservative members. Because party leaders have been too supportive of undeclared wars (now that President Obama is presiding over them). And because Gov. Paul LePage - a growing embarrassment to Maine who thinks the president "hates white people" - has become too liberal, supporting Common Core education standards and an Internet sales tax. It's hard to imagine a better illustration of the destructive and solipsistic tendencies that are pulling apart the Republican Party, repelling mainstream voters. At almost the same moment, half a continent away in Iowa, Chad Brown, co-chairman of the Polk County Republican Party, also renounced his membership and declared himself an independent - because he couldn't live with precisely the kind of reactionary thinking going on in Maine. Mr. Brown told the Des Moines Register he was disgusted with the influence of the religious right and the National Rifle Association, and by the hate-filled comments about immigrants regularly peddled by his fellow Iowan, Representative Steve King. The party lost Polk County (which includes Des Moines) by 32,000 votes last year, he said, in part by declaring war on science and common sense. "It's my opinion that rather than fix the problems that led to such a massive 2012 defeat, the G.O.P. does not seem to seriously want to fix the issues," he said in his resignation letter. Other Republican elected officials have expressed similar sentiments, and some are trying to speak out against ruinous plans by the likes of Senator Ted Cruz to shut down the government and wage hopeless fights against health care reform. But leaders who have tried to pull their party back onto the rails have been attacked. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who used to define rational conservatism in Washington, was recently urged to retire by state Tea Party groups who think he is too bipartisan, too willing to cross the aisle and make deals with Democrats. He now faces a primary challenger from the right. His reply to the Tea Party, published in The Tennessean yesterday, seemed both reasonable and utterly quaint. To get anything done in Congress, he wrote, "you have to work with other people - that is, IF you really care about solving the problem, IF you really want to get a result, instead of just making a speech."