The long game, and the long, long game

A while back on slacktivist (don’t have a link to the specific discussion, sorry), I argued that Republicans are much better at the long game than the Democrats.
When Democrats negotiate a compromise—health-care, taxes, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, trying terrorists in the civil justice system, whatever—they seem to feel they’ve reached a stopping point. They’ve got something done, someday maybe they can move the goalposts further, but they’ve done good work and they’re on the same page with the other side (please note that this is my subjective impression, not backed up by objective evidence).
When Republicans gain an inch (or give an inch), they immediately start pushing to gain a yard.
On Obamacare, they’re already fuming and scheming about how to destroy it.
On abortion and birth control, they never stop pushing to make it harder and harder to get, and ultimately illegal.
On condemning Obama for even suggesting that terrorists can come to trial, no amount of compromise gets them to let up on not only restoring the Gitmo approach (we can hold anyone as long as we like and screw habeas corpus and human rights) but enshrining it as an accepted principle of American greatness.
Dems play the short game. Republicans play the long game and never take their eyes off the ball.
Except one of my fellow commenters argued that the Repubs play the long game very badly. In a time when the Latino population is swelling, they’re anti-immigrant and anti-Latino. As unchurched, agnostic and atheist numbers grow, they cling to religion. As the country grows more and more pro-gay, the Texas Republican Party calls for criminalizing homosexuality (seriously. It’s in their platform).
In short, they’ve cast their lot with aging right-wing bigots, fundamentalists and homophobes and in the long run, that’s bound to come back and bite them.
So I was thinking this weekend that my friend had a point. And wondering why Repubs play it that way. Some possibilities:
•They’re sincere believers in all that and they’re acting on principle (loathsome and illogical as those principles may be).
•They’re stuck. These hard rightists are their base and as the last election showed, walking away from it can kill your career.
•They’re not worried about the long-term future of the Republican Party. If running against Latinos and gays and announcing that anyone who doesn’t accept Christ as their personal savior is not your brother (as the Alabama governor did recently) gets you elected, who cares what happens 20 years down the line? Even if they’re still in office, they can walk away with fat pensions, land consultancies with lobbyists—there’s no downside.
I like the thought that in long the run, the worst of the drek will die off or retire. But they could (and probably will) do a lot of damage to this country and its institutions by then.