For the Grand Old Party the ultimate wedge issue has turned out to be the impeachment of President Clinton -- only it's the republicans who are being driven apart. Peter Y. Sussman, a Berkeley Ca. writer and editor is the co-author of "Committing Journalism" (W.W. Norton).

They're called the House "managers" -- but instead of managing President Clinton's removal from office, the Republicans may well be ushering in the greatest national political realignment of our time.

Impeachment has become the ultimate "wedge" issue aimed directly at the heart of the Grand Old Party -- undoing the precarious alliance between its intrusive, moralistic managers and its get-off-my-back libertarians. The Democrats are mere spectators in this sibling conflict.

The Democrats know from their own experience what wedge issues are about. It wasn't that long ago that they too were polarized between their Southern, rural and their ethnic, urban wings. The disintegration of their own uneasy alliance started the process that has led to the current GOP polarization and incipient disintegration.

While there are a lot of sub-species in the GOP lineup, they all fall into one of two dominant and internally incompatible constituencies. The libertarian constituency believes in freedom and laissez-faire. Sub-species include old states-righters, free marketeers, right-to-arms advocates, right-of-privacy absolutists, anti-tax zealots and, further on the fringes, the "leave-me-alone, don't-tread-on-me" rural utopians.

If politics were entirely rational, then advocates of gay and women's rights should also be fit comfortably into the big tent of GOP laissez-faire interests. But that would be abhorrent to the other GOP constituency -- the moralists -- with their anti-abortion sentiment and anti-gay rhetoric.

The primary political aim of the Christian rightists, or theocrats, is to impose their moral absolutism -- not to mention Christianity itself -- on all levels of American government. They want to outlaw abortion, introduce universal school prayer, regulate sexual practices and centralize moral control on issues ranging from electronic communications to classroom textbook choice.

Uneasy alliances can work at times. Pros from two different political constituencies can share common social ties, common enemies, common interests. The GOP has held itself together for years by making the Democrats the enemy. So-called big government was anathema to all the GOP sub-species. They didn't like the Democrats' centralized enforcement of civil rights, distribution of benefits, direction of the economy.

But in recent elections, the GOP's vulnerability has became evident. A lot of women, troubled by the party's religious absolutism, voted for Democratic candidates. Racial and ethnic minorities -- soon to become majorities in several Southwestern states -- rejected the party's laissez-faire approaches, at least so far as they entail failure to redress racial inequities. And many who voted for Democrats did so because they believed the latter did a good job "managing" the economy.

Now the GOP polarization is revealing itself like an ugly wound. The reason goes to the heart of the impeachment process which the party has been pursuing with zeal. The essence of the Clinton prosecution is the application of an absolutist moral code to a civil proceeding -- the demand that a government official be removed for a moral transgression. One Republican after another has stood up to demand some statement of "atonement" or "contrition" from the president in exchange for any consideration of leniency. The theocrats are in the drivers seat.

For the GOP's other constituency -- the libertarians -- turning a private dalliance into an affair-of-state strikes directly at their fundamental beliefs, in particular their abhorrence of central control.

Thus, in their God-given ardor, the "managers" have ignored the political reality that assured them a prominent seat in the halls of government. They have abandoned their alliance with those in their own party who want government to just get the hell off their backs.

Polls over the past months have made clear that voters do sense there is something wrong within the GOP. Overwhelmingly the voters have made a distinction between the president's private moral transgressions and his official actions. The voters have found an accommodation that the Republicans' complicated history will not allow them to accept.

The Grand Old Party may have found its nemesis not in the Democrats but in its own tortured soul. While trying once again to pull itself together by ganging up to oust Clinton from office, it is tearing itself apart. This would not be the first political party in modern times to be fatally wounded by bedroom politics.