DENVER (AP) - Think Republicans in Congress are starting to bicker among themselves? Look west for a real fight.

Colorado's Republicans are sparring like perhaps nowhere else. Longtime party members and new tea party activists are embroiled in sniping that threatens to rip apart a conservative resurgence in this key swing state.

The bickering is so intense that state GOP chairman Dick Wadhams unexpectedly abandoned his bid for a third term last week.

"I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is," Wadhams said in a letter widely circulated among Republicans.

The state party is engulfed in a smaller but more intense version of the divisions in the national GOP: How should tea party activists and other new conservatives fit in? And how can the party appeal to a Colorado electorate that is increasingly non-white and does not vote strictly on the social issues that have glued conservatives for decades?

"What every party has to worry about is balancing the excitement, enthusiasm and vigor of a committed minority against the larger necessity of winning elections with a broader electorate," said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who follows Republican politics. "That's what's happening nationally, and that's what's happening in Colorado."

Last year's farcical Colorado governor's race intensified the fight.

Tea party favorite Dan Maes won the party nomination when a better-funded candidate was accused of plagiarism. Former GOP Rep. Tom Tancredo then declared Maes unelectable and briefly left the party to run as a third-party candidate. Democrat John Hickenlooper cruised to victory while Republicans bickered about what went wrong.

The GOP also saw Senate candidate Ken Buck lead Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet until just weeks before the election, when Democrats exploited Buck's hard-line opposition to abortion to douse his appeal with moderate independents.

It wasn't all bad news. Republicans did pick up two U.S. House seats, two down-ticket statewide offices and won narrow control of the state House. And the healing may begin next month, when party officers and elected officials pick a new chairman.

They'll decide among conservatives who promise to lead the GOP back to its traditional winning ways versus those who say the party must focus on Colorado's growing numbers of independent and Latino voters.

Among the most prominent in the first group is state Sen. Ted Harvey of suburban Denver, who says the first job is to unite conservatives and that he can reach out to "recent activists," or tea party members. Harvey believes abortion should be outlawed, and once sponsored legislation that would have regulated how bookstores display explicit materials.

"I bring to the debate the ability to bring in traditional Republican supporters," said Harvey.

Others warn the GOP is doomed if it caters too heavily to the right.

"Our party should continue to stand on principle, but do so in a way that reaches out to the independent and unaffiliated voters," said Ryan Call, the party's legal counsel and former chairman of the Denver Republicans.

Also expected to seek the chairman's seat is Bart Baron, a 67-year-old retiree from Michigan who touts his fresh eyes on Colorado Republican politics.

Baron, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2000, says tea party activists asked him to seek the chairmanship. But he said he walked out of a tea party meeting in disgust when people started arguing about true conservatism.

"If you don't build a big tent and reach out, you can't win," Baron said. "You can't have this attitude of 'My way or the highway."'

State conservatives sometimes joke that without big names to defend in 2012, they can focus on delivering the state to the Republican presidential candidate.

"Back in the 1990s, we were talking about the divide between the old chamber-of-commerce Republicans and the new social conservatives coming into the party," said Mark Rozell, who studies American politics at George Mason University.

"Over time, the two factions learned to work together, because they saw the need to be unified and elect common candidates. Today the Republican Party has more varied factions and more internal maneuvering, but the job is the same."

- By Kristen Wyatt, AP Writer

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)