A lot of the die hard republican types I've encountered are responding to all this in one of two ways: they're despairing because what the GOP is turning into doesn't represent their values at fucking all anymore, or they're jumping headfirst into paranoia and doubling down on the stupidity. The latter group doesn't seem to understand the political situation they're in and how much this country has changed in the past few decades.
"Oh we lost the election?
WE WEREN'T RIGHT WING ENOUGH!"
Let's think about this here, Paul Ryan is now being treated as a moderate. Paul Ryan a couple of years ago was a fucking lunatic to most people. I don't think there's any understating the damage the tea party types and hyper-religious nutjobs did to the republican party.
To call a spade a spade, they've increasingly moved in the direction of a sort of
neo-fascism. If you don't feel like reading that article, Trump basically got an entire crowd of people to advocate arresting journalists for criticizing the god emperor. He followed up that terrifying spectacle by saying he wants to
try American citizens in military courts in Guantanamo if they're "terrorist", which translated from newspeak nowadays basically means anybody
the government doesn't like. The GOP base has nominated a man who has an obvious contempt for the constitution and civil liberties, who advocates violence against his political opponents, who peddles conspiracy theories on the reg, and who dogwhistles so loud that every pooch in the god damn county goes deaf whenever he opens his mouth.
The lunatic fringe taking advantage of a fractured political field to get Trump nominated would be one thing. But what truly blows my mind is how much of the right wing political and media establishment has gotten on board with this, completely oblivious to the fact that most Americans are repulsed by this shit and always were. Which is a sign of how completely alienated from mainstream America they are, if anything. Now Clinton is poised for a historic landslide of a victory. And the republicans are going to have nobody to blame but themselves for that.