"Voters want normal people in charge, and they took their wrath out on otherwise normal Republicans who refused to push back..."

"... against the lunacy, corruption and incompetence within the G.O.P. Republicans have spent years warning that a party unwilling to confront its radicals will be defined by them. They meant the Democrats, and pointed in particular at the democratic socialists working to take over the Democratic Party from the inside.Now that warning applies to the G.O.P. The weirdo right will not stop in its attempt to take over the Republican Party, and party leadership must resist it or watch a group that openly declares its contempt for conservatism do to the G.O.P. what the democratic socialists are trying to do to the Democrats.... If Republicans want those voters back, the party’s leaders, beginning with the man who wants to lead it in 2028, will have to reject the demands of the weirdo right.... Until the G.O.P. rejects the weird, the fringe and the grievance hustlers, Democrats will happily remind voters whom the G.O.P. keeps around."

Writes Erick Erickson, in "I’m a Republican. We Have Let Too Many Weirdos Into Our Party" (NYT).

The top-rated comment over there (by a lot): "It's actually not the weirdos that have done the damage to America, the rule of law, the cohesion of community or the political structure. It was the thousands upon thousands of completely normal Republicans who were willing to trade everything, to overlook every crime, to go blind to every injustice, to tolerate any amount of prejudice and inequity... just to get what you wanted. There was no limit to what you would sanction to make sure women couldn't control their own bodies, and the rich paid less tax. The weirdos get the press. But you and your ilk, sir, have been their enablers. They would have gotten nowhere without your acquiescence."