The Republican leadership can’t cut the nutjobs loose, though. They’re aware of the demographics. Even 11 years ago, a Republican “wartime president” in the middle of a war, managed to pull out a small victory against a candidate whose character they managed to successfully assassinate just before the election. That required a gay marriage scare to get some of the most backward knuckledraggers to the polls—and if the fix hadn’t been in in Ohio (like Karl Rove thought it was in 2012), they would have lost the electoral vote.

Things have only gotten worse for them now. They have to hang onto this progressively shrinking but ever crazier and crazier segment, or they’re done for good. With gerrymandering, they can hang onto the House indefinitely, but it’s going to take massive voter suppression to win the White House ever again. Maybe they have enough State Houses that they can do it—but the number of people who are going to be turned away from the polls is going to start looking bad. If they do enough of it to win that is.

They just can’t give up the Crazy Vote™—and they won’t.