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“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  — Abraham Lincoln, 1858, Republican Senate candidate

The battle to succeed Speaker John Boehner will move the House GOP leadership further to the right and away from the overwhelming majority of Jewish voters.

When it comes to the Jewish community, Republicans are essentially a one-issue party. Boehner, like many in his caucus, has been a strong supporter of Israel, but on the domestic agenda there’s a precipitous drop in appeal.

Take the immediate issue: His nemesis, the GOP’s far right, was willing to shut down the government in its zeal to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood and threatened to depose the speaker unless he went along. Instead he decided to move up his planned retirement — he said he intended to announce it on Nov. 17, his 66th birthday — to pre-empt his critics.

By 3-to-1 margins, Jewish voters support a woman’s right to abortion, contraception and family planning. Although not a federal cent going to Planned Parenthood pays for abortions, that was irrelevant to the conservatives who decided to make that their big wedge issue against Democrats.

The influential “values voters” of the religious right are demanding that the next speaker and the next GOP presidential candidate share their uncompromising views on abortion, gay marriage and other hot button social issues.

Similar wide gaps also exist on issues like global warming, environmental and consumer protection, health care reform, Medicare and Social Security funding, immigration reform, aid to education, food stamps and more.

The far-right block, which calls itself the Freedom Caucus, may only have about 50 of the 247 House Republicans, but the coalition holds many colleagues hostage with threats of primary challenges. For proof, tea-baggers point to erstwhile Rep. Eric Cantor, the majority leader who wasn’t conservative enough for them and was soundly defeated by a GOP primary challenger from the further right, David Brat. That left his colleagues stunned and scared of similar fates.

Ironically, had Cantor paid more attention to his district, he might have become the first Jewish speaker in history. He was the only Jewish Republican in the 113th Congress and the highest-ranking Jew ever in either the House or Senate.

Cantor echoed Boehner’s assessment that their party’s far right is unrealistic. Writing in the New York Times recently he said, “The tragedy here is that these voices have not been honest with our fellow conservatives. They have not been honest about what can be accomplished when your party controls Congress, but not the White House.”

He learned from painful experience that the party’s extremists consider compromise and Boehner’s streak of pragmatism mortal sins.

Congress needs leaders who can solve problems, not create new ones. A change of leadership won’t heal the wounds in the GOP or broaden its national base; it will only reinforce the grip of the extremists.

The GOP is at war with itself. Moderate Republicans are near extinction in the House, with the party split between the far right and the extreme right.

Israel is not atop the agenda for most Jewish voters, but for Republicans it is their best appeal to Jews, especially those with deep pockets like Sheldon Adelson. That is behind the party’s intense campaign to portray Barack Obama and Democrats as enemies of the Jewish state. They partnered with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his American-born ambassador, Ron Dermer, formerly a Republican operative.

Boehner will be remembered as the speaker who secretly invited the Israeli leader to speak to the Congress to boost the Republican campaign to defeat the Iranian nuclear agreement negotiated by Obama. Anyone who doubted that the opposition to the Iran deal wasn’t overwhelmingly partisan should consider that Republicans voted unanimously against it, many announcing their opposition from the outset and few even bothering to read the final documents.

The speech led to the most serious crisis

in U.S.-Israel relations in nearly 25 years since President George H.W. Bush threatened to cut aid unless Israel halted settlement construction.

The Dermer-Boehner-Netanyahu ploy did great damage to Democratic support for Israel on Capitol Hill and made the ambassador virtually persona non grata at the White House.

That may be bad news for Israel, but it’s good news for Republicans who see Israel as a major political wedge issue in seeking Jewish support — not from voters but from Israel-focused big givers.

It is also a critical issue for the party’s much larger and more influential evangelical base.

The GOP can count on a substantial segment of Orthodox Jewish voters, a small but growing minority who identify with the party’s hardline positions on Israel and on domestic social issues. But how much further the party can move toward the extreme right and still retain support of wealthy Jewish conservatives who have been bankrolling it remains to be seen.

Douglas M. Bloomfield is the president of Bloomfield Associates Inc., a Washington, D.C., lobbying and consulting firm. He spent nine years as the legislative director and chief lobbyist for AIPAC.