Republicans have us lurching toward a very strange 2016 election

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
-- W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

If you have been a frequent reader of mine in the nearly 15 years I have been writing for various Internet websites, you can't be surprised to see me quoting Yeats. Good old Bill -- and particularly this work -- really resonates with me.

Great works of literature are multifaceted, yielding more of their secrets each time you study them.

Most of the time, I focus in on the first part of this quote. But for some reason, today it was the final part that struck me as important.

" ... the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Yesterday evening in Cleveland, 17 different candidates for the Republican nomination for president took part in two debates in Cleveland. The mere fact of the number ought to tell us that none of the candidates are some impressive that they're scaring others off.

That said, the worst and scariest of them are full of passionate intensity. They speak of going to war with Iran, of defying the Supreme Court and of shutting down private companies like Planned Parenthood. Several even say they would deny women the right to abortions if their lives were at stake.

And then there is Donald Trump, the present-day H. Ross Perot or George Wallace. Trump has certainly made things exciting, and it looks as if his election next year would enable us to mothball Air Force One for four years.

Trump does have one advantage over the other top-tier candidates. He might actually be sane, and he may be the only Republican running with a strong enough personality to actually say no to the lunatics in Congress.

He also doesn't give off that "religious fanatic" vibe, which is good, but he also doesn't look like a candidate who would care much about income inequality as president. The truly frightening part of it all is that of the other 16 candidates, most of them either haver worse drawbacks to their candidacies than Trump or are basically unelectable.

One candidate on the other side of the equation seems like he might be a good president. I like Bernie Sanders a lot, I respect his integrity and I'm very much in sync with his positions on most issues. That's why I've made two small donations to his campaign and will probably make more.

Sanders has two major drawbacks, though. First is that he'll be 75 years old on election day, five years older than anyone else who was ever elected.

Second is that of all the candidates in the race, Sanders is the farthest to the left, and American voters tend to elect the candidate who best presents himself as a centrist. That's why the most realistic hope is for Sanders to draw probable nominee Hillary Clinton a little to the left.

The real problem is that politics has changed so much. We used to be a country where one party was 10 degrees to the left of center and the other 10 degrees to the right. Most issues were settled by compromises and the country ran fairly well.

As author Thomas E. Mann says in his new book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks," Republicans have swung so far to the right that few compromises are even possible anymore.

" ... the worst are full of passionate intensity."

When the center fails to hold, bad things happen. Will next year be a year that will see a return to a more centrist politics or will things keep getting worse?

It's difficult to imagine a Republican who could take things back to the center, and it's even more difficult to imagine a Democrat as president who wouldn't drive the right wing into a state of psychosis.

So maybe we end up wondering, as Yeats did, what will happen. As the poet said:

"... what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"