For some reason, the Republican elite didn’t expect their quadrennial culture war extremism to leak out of the GOP primary into the general election.

... [T]he war on women had died down a little in the last couple of months. Romney was narrowing President Obama’s edge with women voters in some polls.

Then along came Todd Akin, with his crude, creepy obsession with the way women’s bodies supposedly work. This one the GOP can’t blame on Democrats. ... [N]ow the party is coming unglued...

And even as “mainstream” Republicans were repudiating Akin, they were presiding over the most extreme antiabortion language yet in the 2012 party platform, again calling for a ban even in cases of rape and incest.

How did we get here?