The natives outside the Beltway are restless. We lefties threaten to storm the gates and elect Democrats who will be proactively progressive and not GOP Lite. Meanwhile, righties were way underwhelmed by the President’s prime time immigration speech. I notice they’ve started to call him “Jorge,” probably not out of affection. And social conservatives are threatening to withhold support from Republicans in the midterm elections if they don’t hop to it and do something about abortions and gay marriage.

Wow, suddenly we’re one nation again. We’re united in frustration with the politicians in Washington.

In other ways, however, Left and Right are in very different places, and I think the Right’s position is more perilous. Of course, it’s always possible the Dems will blow off opportunity once again and the Republicans will maintain domination of government.

Washington Dems tremble in fear of us raging, wild-eyed, unhinged lefties who are tired of “progressive” policies that are nothing but tweaks to the mighty Right Wing agenda. We want to see substantive progress in health care, an increase in the minimum wage, and protection of the environment. We want investment in education and sustainable energy sources. And we want a foreign policy modeled more after JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis and less after Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry.”

Most of all we want a government that works. We want a government that responds to the will of We, the People, not a government that acts as a vending machine for big corporations and special interests.

This is, I realize, lunatic. Some of us even take inspiration from such un-American radicals as Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and John F. Kennedy. We are one wild and crazy political faction. No wonder Washington Dems won’t be seen with us in public (they’ll take our money, though).

However, the Dems’ problems are simple compared to what the GOP faces.

Over the past 30 to 40 years or more Republicans carefully and patiently patched together a coalition of social conservatives, small-government conservatives, isolationist conservatives, imperialist conservatives (a.k.a. “neocons”), plus the flotsam and jetsam of conservatism past — bigots, nativists, fundamentalists, survivalists, etc.

The GOP accomplished this via a two-step approach. Step one, scare the wits out of the natives. Tell them they are about to be overwhelmed by the evils of Communism, or uppity black people, or dirty antiwar hippies, or feminists, or perpetually pregnant welfare queens, or atheist school principals who take Bibles out of the hands of little Christian children. Or persuade voters our country faces ruin because of birth control and legalized abortion and gay people getting married to each other. Using these and other issues Republicans skillfully reached into the darkest and ugliest impulses of the American psyche and exploited those impulses. They used well-coordinated and relentless talking point campaigns (which were especially effective after the rise of conservative talk radio and Faux News) to whip Americans into spasms of fear and outrage. Most of all, they demonized liberalism to the point that even liberals were afraid to use the L word in public.

Once the natives were properly fearful and angry, Republicans moved on to step two — they presented themselves as God’s Chosen Agents to save America from whatever Americans were afraid of at the time. Through use of inflammatory rhetoric, spin, and “swift boat”-style smear campaigns, Republican politicians persuaded Americans they were tougher, more patriotic, more God-fearing, and more moral than their opponents. (Never mind that Republicans get caught up in scandals at least as frequently as Democrats. When a Republican is caught red-handed it’s either an aberration or a false charge drummed up by the leftie media. When a Democrat is caught red-handed, however, it’s proof they’re all corrupt.)

The Republicans’ strategy has been wonderfully effective for them. They created a solid base of voters who would stick with Republicans no matter how inept they were because, you know, Democrats are all perverts. And anything “liberal” is, by definition, insane. This meme works especially well with people who have no clue what liberalism actually is, which is most Americans these days. Republicans (as well as most of the Democrats) have thrived in a system that allows government to lavish attention on Big Money campaign contributors, special interest groups, and mega-corporations, while voters are distracted by demagoguery so they won’t notice the government isn’t working for them.

But now something is happening that the Republicans didn’t anticipate. Now that Republicans have a near-absolute control of the federal government, the conservative base wants results.

El Presidente Bush is in a bind over immigration because, on the one hand, the Big Money guys who put him in the White House in the first place want to import cheap labor. Measures that would effectively reduce the flow of illegals into the country would cut into profits and force rich people to raise their own children. (Oh, no!) But the base wants the illegals gone. So last night Bush pushed his misbegotten “guest worker” program but also threw a bone to the growlers by promising to send National Guard to the borders. Judging by the blogosphere, however, the base ain’t buyin’ it.

Regarding gas prices — one of the Bush Administration’s first official acts was to look the other way while their buddies at Enron ripped off California. Their next official act was to invite oil executives to write the administration’s energy policies. You think they’re going to get tough with oil companies? Yeah, and I’m Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

In the area of social issues like abortion, for years the Right has been playing a fired-up pro-criminalization minority against a complacent pro-legalization majority. At least some GOP party leaders must be smart enough to realize that if the GOP were to deliver on their promise to criminalize abortion the backlash would send the GOP the way of the Whigs. And don’t even think about criminalizing birth control.

Republicans face the same problem on issue after issue. The base wants to ban gay marriage; moderates may be ambivalent about gay marriage, but they are definitely turned off by excessive homophobia. Hurricane Katrina taught us that, although volunteerism and self-reliance are fine, sometimes, people really do need a big, strong government to help them. Voters across the political spectrum want the U.S. to gain better control of its borders, but draconian campaigns to deport illegals who are already here would result in heart-wrenching news stories of families being torn apart. This would turn off moderates and liberals as well as ensure that Latino citizens will be Democrats for the next century or so.

The Republicans are even losing the majority on their all-time greatest fear-mongering issue, terrorism. And bringing the troops home from Iraq might please a majority of voters but would infuriate the base.

Thus, Republicans face an agenda impasse; they have to promise one thing to the base while assuring the rest of the country they don’t really mean it. Since issues aren’t working for them, they’re trying to keep Congress by whipping up fear and loathing of Democrats.

And, unfortunately, inside-the-Beltway Dems are clueless enough to let the GOP get away with it.