The Guardian is absurdly optimistic.

So apparently some amongst the GOP are beinging to worry their hatemongering, xenophobia and racism will hurt their election chances. Quite why they're worrying their core principles might be failing them when they've worked so well in the past I'm unsure. Their central concern seems to be their hysteria about brown people building a religious community centre is distracting voters from their efforts to shift the blame for the aftermath of Bush era "free" market policies onto Obama.

"Rising star" of the party Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie is worried about it for some reason, he of course blames the Democratic party as much of the GOP of course. But seriously, Christ Christie? I can only imagine his middle name is Christ with his parents fervently hoping he would be so "Christian" that he would be Christ Cubed.

But heck, when part of the GOP is worried you're being too racist and hateful albeit for political reasons and not common decency, you must be being spectacularly hateful.

Of course the final paragraph illustrates another potential reason members of the party might be backing away from Islamophobic hysteria:

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has called for an official investigation into the opposition. "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some," she said. "And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded." "How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we've been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City."

Given the corporate astroturfing of the Tea Party movement it could just be that the popular anger over this issue has been calmly bought and paid for rather than spontaneously emerged.