“They’re bonkers. Bizarre. They’re like a Star Wars bar room”

[hifiguy]

22. I concur,

but Gingrich was just the first highly visible public face of what the Repigs had already become. The massive purges of the responsible adults and non-jebus wheezers began in the 1970s. It took a good 15 years to run all the sane people out of the party but it was done with a thoroughness Stalin would have admired.

My home state of Minnesota used to have many decent people in the Republican party, people with whom one could civilly disagree and debate, and who were evidence-based thinkers - individuals like former governor Arne Carlson, former US Senator Dave Durenberger and many others. They were all run out of the party on a rail by the religulously insane who were eventually joined by the Ayn Rand disciples. It's a wasteland now. Carlson endorsed Kerry in '04 and Obama in '08. Very publicly.