More Words, Deeper Hole

*And* they couldn't be so rabidly anti-government as to want to shut the whole thing down, because it was government that was required in order for them to bring the presents home.

A political scientist I know puts it this way: What kinds of people are anti-government, and therefore run for government? Idiots and crooks. This has perennially plagued the more conservative outlying districts for the Republican Party. But now—thanks to gerrymandering and no earmarks, as you say—they're all outlying districts, and there's no percentage in a crook who isn't an also idiot getting into Republican electoral politics in the first place. The more usual sane-but-craven politicians have been fleeing the Republican Party for a while now; Boehner and McCarthy took people surprise only by how sudden and public their withdrawals were.