Re: 2nd Term Part X - A link to a fore gone conclusion
The GOP wasn't always so crazy at the core. There were always far right fringe wackjobs (just as there were to the far left of the Dems) but the central tendency of the party was sober. Reagan began as an intra-party revolt but once the Reaganites gained power it was Animal Farm -- they started acting just like the prior party bosses and, while ideological, they were responsible.
1994 was when the GOP went off the rails. Newt was a talented P. T. Barnum and his circus started the Eternal September of the Republicans. Even with the Bush family burrowed back in the White House the Congressional Republicans continued to get more and more rabid, until the party itself fractured in 2006. There's almost no party left, now. There are just independent city-states (Santorumland, Trump Mordor, the Kingdom of the Two Pauls, Cruz Fantasy Island) run as proxy states for billionaires, dotting endless stretches of wild, unexplored frontierland where the armies are recruited.