There is no off the path for a short time, not with the GOP. We have to remember that Reagan's 8 years in office were the anomaly, not the norm. The post-Reagan GOP has merely congealed back into its pre-Reagan state. They obfuscated him at every point in his path to the presidency, and only because of his enormous popularity did they have to begrudgingly bite back their disdain once he was in office.
They had control of both houses of Congress and the White House for many years. They not only failed to establish a holding pattern (which is the best you can ever expect out of the GOP) but they proved just how much love they too have for Big Government profligacy. Onto this prepped ground comes the biggest and most divisive demagogue anyone in living memory has seen, who promptly begins 4 years of pouring gasoline onto an already burning economy, and the Stupid Party couldn't beat him?
If this were a football game, the GOP is doing the equivalent of punting on 1st downs. It's fire-the-coach-midseason behavior. To continue the football analogy, at this point we're not playing for the title, we're playing for next year's draft picks (i.e. let this disaster happen and hope we can emerge from it better than we were).
