In 59 B.C.E., the Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar served a controversial year as one-half of ancient Rome’s double-headed executive office, which was comprised of two magistrates known as Consuls. He was so violently opposed in his agenda of land and welfare reforms by his Co-Consul, Marcus Bibulus, one of the more conservative members of Rome’s ruling Senate, that Caesar was required to do most of the work himself during the one-year term, which came to be known jokingly as “the Consulship of Julius and Caesar” (instead of “and Bibulus”).

In a way, this is how the Republicans are starting to look following the recent breach within the ranks over LGBT rights, and specifically marriage equality, like a two-headed snake working at cross purposes against itself.

Assuming for a minute that there was something courageous, and not remotely self-serving, about the self-“outing” this week of U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) as the father of a gay son—especially since it occurred weeks after other national Republicans gave him cover by their calls for the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8—how does that “courage” translate into wider policy shifts by the GOP leadership?

First off, most of the Big Money donors in the GOP are either active or casual supporters of LGBT rights. Of the rest, a majority are libertarians and don’t care about the issue one way or the other, and just a tiny fraction (like the Koch Brothers, or the DeVos family of Amway) is devoted to conservative Christian causes.

But even after Portman’s family-motivated conversion to the ranks of the equality-loving, the nation’s highest-ranking Republican, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Ohioan, still held to the party line, telling ABC News on Sunday, “I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” and adding for good measure, “I can’t imagine that position would ever change.”

So who “speaks” for the Grand Old Party, the “Speaker,” or party mandarins like Jeb Bush, who told C-PAC that the Republicans’ homophobic rhetoric is scaring the ‘normals’?

I mention the former Florida governor (the “Is He, Or Isn’t He?”—as in running for President—Boy of 2013) to draw attention to a fundamental political truth of this off-election year: Boehner’s playing-to-the-intolerant-wing of the GOP is still the surer way to the 2016 nod than the pragmatism of a Jeb or the tolerance and fair-mindedness of a Jon Huntsman, Jr. (who demonstrated real courage and leadership with his editorial last month in The American Conservative in support of marriage equality).

But Republican presidential primaries are decided by social and religious conservatives, not moderates, centrists, or even libertarians. The grassroots organizations and activists (who were first mobilized a decade ago by Karl Rove) who make the phone calls and send in donations consist of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians (who have little use for the Mormon Huntsman, or even his distant cousin, Mitt Romney).

Those activists take their cues, not from Huntsman, but from the likes of Limbaugh (who, unlike the former Utah governor, never voted once for Ronald Reagan; how’s that feel Ditto-tards?). And all GOP presidential primary math requires some measure of these values voters, who still aren’t “queer” for gay marriage.