Yep. Basically the Kevin McCarthys and Cheneys and Lindsey Grahams and Karl Roves - the wealthy GOP business elite and their lackeys - thought they could gain and maintain power by appealing to the bigotries and sexism and homophobia and class and social resentments of white working-class people. In effect they'd wage an all-out culture war so they could gain power and implement what they really cared about, which were massive tax cuts and deregulation and the gutting of government programs created as far back as the Progressive Era and New Deal, all to enrich themselves beyond belief. And in their arrogance they thought they could just throw a few culture war bones and some red meat at their base to keep them voting Republican and that they could maintain control of the party and that all would be well.
And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but they gradually lost control of the monster they created and now it's been steadily turning on them, one by one. Some, like Cheney and McCarthy (and Thom Tillis for that matter), have already been driven from power (if not wealth), while others like Graham are reduced to being suck ups and toadies to a guy like Trump to stay in office. They created a Frankenstein monster that they no longer fully control, although certainly they've achieved most of their initial goals, so I doubt many of them care, although my guess is that people like McCarthy and Lynne Cheney (and Elise Stefanik and others) are bitter about how things ended for them. I don't believe that any of these people (most of the GOP elite) are sincere culture warriors. and they've always known their culture-war bullshit was a lie, which in some ways makes their actions even more despicable than the true believers in the party.
