Procedural violations (her emails) or personal flaws (Biden’s aging) are understandable in this framework and need to be punished to reassert the legitimacy of the system. “The president is a rapist who participated in a child trafficking network” breaks the whole premise of legitimacy.

If the GOP endorses racism, or transphobia, or dictatorship, they believe that these ideas must be, at least in part, acceptable ones - because to recognize them as unacceptable calls the whole process of power into question.

these revelations are damaging, as they should be. but if the gop were going to abandon trump because he was unfit for office, they would have done that a long time ago.

Bad behavior by random men in spheres the press doesn't consider 'serious' or of public concern tends to spread like cancer