Republican extremism

I think it is entirely mistaken to represent Republican extremism as a mere electoral strategy or as something that only started with opposition to president Obama. I think it started quite a while ago when the Party welcomed the Evangelical Fundamentalists to become a major element of its political base. It was clear that many of them were religious fanatics willing to applaud bombing of abortion clinics, persecution of gays and Israeli atrocities commited upon Palestinian Arabs all because, in their minds, their readings of the Bible superseded both secular law and ordinary humanistic morality. However, the neocons, (sometimes mistaken for foreign policy experts), already in the party wanted them as "useful idiots" who would help them steer the country into the military adventures they craved. Decent conservatives, for reasons best known to themselves, put up with this. Now it will be very hard to undo the damage.