Back in the before-times, when all the polls predicted a landslide Hillary Clinton victory and establishment Republicans were pivoting away from Donald Trump like a chorus line, I had a postelection cautionary column in the hopper. It was imperative, I planned to write, that we remember who the Republicans were before Trump thundered in and tossed reality on its axis.

Don’t let them trick you, I was going to say. They will try — they are already trying — to use Trump as a foil, to quarantine the Trumpists and situate themselves, by contrast, on the side of goodness and rationality and respect. Do not let them off the hook so easily. Never forget that Trump wasn’t anomalous, he was the Republican Party’s quintessence, and their defection is a matter of self-preservation, not conscience.

Of course, I never got to write that essay. Trump won, and Republicans didn’t pivot. They wrapped their arms around his meaty torso and held on for dear life, while the most vile and violent factions of the Republican base got busy living their whole truth.

This past Friday night, those factions — swollen and bold from eight months of making America great again — marched in Charlottesville, Va. They carried torches, shouted Nazi slogans and rallied in protest of the prospect of removing a statue of Robert E. Lee.. The next day, according to police, James Fields Jr., a registered Republican, drove his car into a crowd of counterprotestors, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.