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During the Obama years, some of the Republican Party’s leading finance wing bosses started playing with fire. The Koch Brothers poured a fortune into the creation of the Tea Party, a hardline group that made it clear that the would rather lose elections than lose the culture war. They primaried career GOP politicians and replaced them with swivel-eyed loons (and normie politicians who were willing to vote like swivel-eyed loons). These hardliners changed the conservative coalition’s balance of power. By making it clear that they would rather see Democrats in office than Republicans who reneged on their culture war promises, they put the fear of (an evangelical) God into their leaders. The Tea Party marked a turning point for the US conservative movement and then conservative movements around the world. Hardline conservative policies — total abortion bans, groomer panics, institutionalized racism, historical revisionism, support for white nationalist — are not popular. Ideas like universal medical care, expanded transit, humane immigration policies and infrastructure spending enjoy commanding majority support among both Republicans and Democrats. But the hardliners threw the steering-wheel out the window. They’ve made it clear to GOP party bosses that they would rather lose elections than lose the culture war.