You don’t get a pass just because the bombs didn’t go off. Incompetence isn’t a defense.
That’s because the Republican party doesn’t really have a base; the base is about 85-95% of the party. Republicans don’t play to a base anymore. “We’ll get Paul Ryan to drop in a few references to Ayn Rand and ungrateful brown welfare mooches but then run back to the center” – no, those days are over, which is why they are stuck in a feedback loop of ever-increasingly anti-democratic behavior.
Where does it eventually lead? A violently oppressive right wing political force that promotes secession in defeat and total oppression whenever it gains even a whiff of power. Where this is heading is ugly. I don’t think people on either side realize just how ugly this can, and I think inevitably will, get.