1. Yes, MAGAism/extremism has infected the GOP at the local/grassroots level badly. Its a lesson in what happens when brush fires are left to turn into wildfires. As the party began its march towards extremism, which was a bottom-up issue fed by grassroots/party activists https://twitter.com/amyewalter/status/1285237637331202048

pushing ideological primary challenges (and in some cases, these led to strategic retirements, like Kay Bailey Hutchinson down in TX, who retired rather than lose a primary to Ted Cruz after she saw what happened to Bob Bennett in UT). The 2010, 2012, and 2014 cycles were brutal

2. for the GOP, first the moderates got wiped out from their own party in primaries, and then later, the Tea Party types went after the true blue conservatives like Cantor too (Cantor was by no means a moderate!). By the time we got to 2016, the DW-NOMINATE scores had to get

3. reconfigured because for awhile, the conservative side of the spectrum started to exceed the bounds of -1, which being a grad student at UGA & having "The Dude" Keith Poole on my committee, I pointed out to them when I discovered it working w the vote view data. And thats

4. the story at the federal level. At the lower levels, these same grassroots activists took over the party committees, the state committees, local offices, etc, which was easy to do bc so few people participate in local primaries & when primaries failed, they'd switch the

5. nominating systems over to conventions- which is how VA's 5th district found itself losing its incumbent Republican congressman @Denver4VA (who is in the middle of the most ideologically extreme/conservative GOP Caucus in the history of the House) & is instead running another

6. open race w an untested, unknown newbie who is, btw, an extremist (still favored to win- this is exactly how the House has broken down this past decade though). Yes, at the local level there are people running state party's for the GOP that post racist posts, Q conspiracies

7. These state parties were foolish to let extremism go unpunished as it began to take root in their party- they focused instead on short term political gains that could be yielded from these constituencies. Like many circumstances in which people think they can play with fire

8. & not get burned, that's exactly what happened to the Republican Party. Post financial collapse, they expected to be out in the political wilderness, but figured out that there was an extra reactionary element to be had from tapping into racism toward Obama, sexism to Pelosi,

9. and xenophobia to immigrants. They realized they could simmer it, stoke it, manipulate it- that it could be mined for voters & for viewers- & it worked, oh boy, did it work. Both came. The voters to the midterms, the viewers to the right wing media machine but in that process

10. GOP elites, office holders, party leaders, committee members, etc began to learn they could no longer reign in bad behavior. They could no longer keep crazy people out of leadership positions. They couldn't even speak against them anymore, or they'd be targeted themselves.

11. Once that fear set in, once the party's adults lost the "policing function"- that was it. And now, states have elected ideologues that refuse mask mandates even as their constituents are dying by the 100s every day. And the GOP's TX chapter is going to be led by Allen West