Republicans always choose radicalization to energize their electoral base

"There are ideological factors at play that severely restrict the realm of possibility and significantly privilege the more radical over the more restraint forces within the Republican party. It has become dogma on the right to define "us" (conservative white Christians) as the sole proponents of "real America" – and "them" (Democrats, liberals, "the left") as a fundamentally illegitimate, "un-American" threat. Within the confines of such a worldview, it's hard to justify compromise and restraint.

Every crisis situation only heightens the sense of being under siege that's animating so much of what is happening on the right, legitimizing and amplifying calls to hit harder, more aggressively. There's always permission to escalate, hardly ever to pull back. This underlying permission structure is absolutely key, and it is always the same: It states that "real Americans" are constantly being victimized, made to suffer under the yoke of crazy leftist politics, besieged by "un-American" forces of leftism; "we" have to fight back, by whatever means. In the minds of conservatives, they are never the aggressors, always the ones under assault. Building up this supposedly totalitarian, violent threat from the "left" allows them to justify their actions within the long-established framework of conservative self-victimization."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/22/republicans-january-6-trumpism-radicalization-voters