With a few exceptions people involved in politics miss that the Republican Party is now an extremist right wing party.

Almost all journalists that work in conventional media write and speak about the Republican Party without acknowledging that the Republican Party has massively changed. Most main stream journalists and even Democrats refer to the Republican Party of 20 years ago. That political party only remains in isolated fragments. 

Most people, including me, want to cling to the idea of responsible Republicans, responsible business leaders, lawyers and physicians that we had in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Today’s Republican Party is a right wing extremist party. Referring to it as though it is the conservative party of 20 years ago or the moderate conservative party of the 1950s and 1960s is untruthful and dangerous to our democratic system. 

People who cling to the belief of a responsible moderate Republican Party will continue to be shocked by what the Republicans are doing. 

Bernie Sanders describes today’s Republican Party very well:

Bernie Sanders Delivers Keynote Address to PA Progressive Summit | Audio 

"Sanders’s talk charted the stark right-wing shift of the Republican Party over the past 30 years, the need to make Congress work for working families instead of the donor class, and the dominance a handful of billionaires such as the Koch brothers have on our political system." 

http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2015/02/09/bernie-sanders-delivers-keynote-address-to-pa-progressive-summit-audio/#prettyPhoto