re: #8 hellosnackbar

One wonders whether he will be the first of many as the lunacy in the GOP
seems to persist.

He’s not the first by a long shot. Moderates have been jumping the GOP ship at least since the Reagan years while liberal Republicans disappeared in the 70s. I started to have doubts about the time of the Clinton impeachment farce and dived overboard after Obama turned out not to be the Marxist saboteur the right portrayed him to be. In recent years the process has accelerated with breathtaking speed, with both former Presidents Bush and even the arch-media-villain Karl Rove being consigned to RINO-hood.
It all has to do with the religious right’s strength in organization, leveraged from the pre-existing network of fundamentalist churches and businesses, and their talent for simple-minded but powerful rhetoric, developed during decades of revival meetings and TV ministry.
Today, the leading edge of the GOP is moving beyond the religious right into the dark realms of libertarian isolationism, with its reliance on antisemitic conspiracy theories and the Rand cult.