It’s sometimes easy to frame political parties — especially opposing political parties — as gigantic, monolithic entities that act with one mind from top to bottom. As those involved in partisan politics on either side of the aisle know, however, even in these highly polarized times political parties are made up of a diverse array of internal factions and coalitions that often compete with each other to shape their party’s message and to control the machinery that will ultimately allow that bloc to promote its vision for the party and the community around them.

Some intra-party differences might be cosmetic or tactical, but some — like whether to reject or embrace the rhetoric and aims of white nationalism–are fundamental and irreconcilable. For the Republican Party in Maine, this fundamental choice of posture is quickly becoming a real issue.

While glaring pronouncements of xenophobia have been a fixture of LePage-era Republican politics in Maine for nearly a decade now, in recent weeks attention has been drawn to more overtly white nationalist cohorts that have begun to take root within the infrastructure of the party. Whether these factions represent the most powerful or simply the loudest coalitions in the state GOP remains an open question.

Last week presented a stark example of the ideological and existential fork in the road at which the Maine GOP currently stands.

On one hand, the Waldo County Republican Committee was apparently sent reeling when it was revealed that their vice-chair Adam Ratterree had contacted and given a sympathetic podcast interview to Tom Kawczynski, the disgraced now-former town manager of Jackman who had recently been outed as a white separatist.

It appears that the committee held an emergency meeting, and while ultimately it chose not to remove or censure Ratterree for giving a platform for what amounted to polite hate speech, county chair Michael Cunningham published an earnest if not completely unproblematic op-ed officially condemning racism and xenophobia as incompatible with the founding tenets of the Republican Party. Cunningham goes on to specifically attack the language of “white genocide,” which was coincidentally employed days earlier by none other than Maine state Rep. Larry Lockman, who has used his perch in the State House to rain down a torrent of overtly racist abuse on individuals and groups across the state for years.

Cunningham’s article gave the impression of a leader within the GOP apparatus genuinely grappling with how best to push back against the creep of white nationalist politics within his organization. It’s messy and imperfect, but it represents a good faith attempt to step back from the ledge and intentionally move in a new, more inclusive direction.

On the other hand, over the same time period, and against the same backdrop of heightened public scrutiny over extreme rhetoric, another arm of the state GOP chose to simply jump over the cliff.

The Androscoggin County Republican Committee opted during that time to sponsor a social media post amplifying a speech made at a Lewiston City Council meeting by a member of the community who called Maine’s immigrant community an existential threat to the state. This was followed by the committee publicly attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center — one of the most authoritative civil rights organizations and hate-group monitors in the country — at one point paradoxically referring to the SPLC itself as a hate group.

The committee’s attack on the SPLC parroted a line from the anonymous and ultra-nationalist Maine First Media, by whom the SPLC was attacked after it published an expose linking an anti-female genital mutilation bill sponsored by Republican state Rep. Heather Sirocki to a national anti- Muslim group monitored by SPLC. The SPLC noted that ACT for America, the group with whom Sirocki had been communicating, deploy legally redundant anti-FGM and anti-Sharia Law bills to promote a larger narrative of Islamophobia around the nation.

Unlike in Waldo, in the face of such incendiary rhetoric we see no revulsion, outrage, or even apprehension from the Androscoggin County GOP leadership over what any rational observer would describe as an official social media account that has been hijacked by a ranting white nationalist. Rather, from chair Patti Gagne, a prominent and well-respected member of the Lewiston community, we see consent by silence as the committee promotes a worldview of hatred and exclusion.

Both the Waldo and Androscoggin chapters are comprised of the grassroots activists that form the base of the state Republican Party, but through them we glimpse an organization of two separate minds on who and what it stands for. But the GOP cannot simultaneously be the party of Lincoln and the party of Trump, and despite the efforts of those who envision the former, there is little doubt which faction speaks with more force and authority within the state apparatus.

So if a faction of GOP leadership wishes to project an image of tolerance and moderation, they will need to begin by preaching inside their own divided house.

The preceding originally appeared on mainebeacon.com, a website and podcast created by progressive group the Maine People’s Alliance.