Republicans won the presidency on November 8 because Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in states with more than 270 electoral votes between them; but Trump will be president instead of anyone else first and foremost because Republicans nominated him, despite widespread awareness within the party of his aberrance and unfitness for the office.

From the moment Trump vaulted to the top of presidential primary polls more than a year ago, anti-Trump conservatives have sought explanations outside of conservative political culture for his appeal to Republican voters.

The most popular of these is the “cried wolf” theory, under which Trump won the GOP nomination not because of widespread racism and sexism in white America, or widespread indifference to racism and sexism in white America, but because liberals had inured Republican voters to allegations of racism and sexism through overuse.

Beyond its substantive shortcomings, the “cried wolf” critique infantilizes Trump supporters by suggesting that liberal attacks on Mitt Romney and other GOP standard-bearers made conservative voters incapable of detecting racism and sexism on their own.

After Trump won the nomination, many of the same anti-Trump conservatives—anticipating he’d bring the same norm-shattering behavior that won him the nomination into the White House—likewise sought explanations outside of conservative political culture for that norm-shattering.