On Thursday afternoon, CNN reported that North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson visited a porn site where he called himself a “black Nazi,” said he wished slavery were still legal, insulted Martin Luther King, and expressed several controversial sexual opinions (the latter, at least, more in line with the tone of the opinion you might expect to hear on “NudeAfrica,” the porn site he visited.)

Of course, every political party’s vetting process will occasionally go awry. But to understand how Robinson won the gubernatorial nomination in a swing state, we need some context for how the Republican Party’s gatekeeping functions have deteriorated to their sorry state.

Robinson was known for his history of making extremely wild statements outside the NudeAfrica board. Here’s a quick recap, from March:

There was the time he called school shooting survivors “media prostitutes” for standing up for gun control policies. The meme where he ridiculed an accuser of Harvey Weinstein; and another where he ridiculed actresses for “wearing whore dresses to protest sexual harassment.” The prediction that the growing acceptance of homosexuality would lead to pedophilia and “the END of civilization as we know it”; the talk of arresting trans people for their bathroom choices; the use of anti-Semitic tropes; the Facebook posts calling Hillary Clinton a “heifer” and Michelle Obama a man.

Robinson said all of these things before his party’s primaries took place. Republicans were informed about these kinds of things, and Than decided to nominate him for governor. The Republican Party could have found a more down-to-earth candidate than Robinson, even if they had limited their recruitment entirely to the NudeAfrica posting community.

In the meantime, here are some things that have happened within the Republican Party this past week…

Donald Trump, the party’s presidential nominee, began spending time with and seeking advice from Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist who wrote — also last week! — that the White House “will smell like curry” if Kamala Harris is elected.

Bill Ackman, a wealthy hedge fund manager who supported Trump, began posting uncontrollably about a right-wing theory that there (or was) a whistleblower at ABC News who claims the network asked Harris questions before the presidential debate but then died in a car crash.

Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world and a major financial supporter of Trump’s ground operation, predicted on his social media platform that Harris’ first act if elected would be to ban X and arrest Musk.

And all of this happened at a time when the party’s presidential ticket was pushing the message that immigrants in an Ohio town were kidnapping and eating pets. The lie about eating pets did not distract from the message. It is the message and the crazier things Robinson, Loomer and others say are distracting.

This is not a problem of fringe figures operating on the fringes of the party. The party’s ability to distinguish between respectable, reality-based figures wielding influence and conspiracy theorists lurking around the edges has completely collapsed.

The end of the party’s ability to police its borders is generally attributed to Trump’s hostile takeover in 2016. Like the fall of the Roman Empire, however, the decline was more of a gradual disintegration over a long period of time, with Trump’s coronation merely dramatizing it. Many Romans continued to view the Empire as an enduring entity even after Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome in 476. Many non-crazy Republicans likewise continue to believe that “conspiracy theorist” and “Republican leader” are meaningfully different categories.

And just as the slow decline of the Roman Empire was both a result of and a cause of an inability to defend its borders, the Republican Party is now defined by an almost complete unwillingness to draw the line between acceptable party rhetoric and paranoid bluster. What’s left of the party’s once-formidable establishment has been reduced to a feeble warning that sounding too crazy in public will have electoral consequences. “Donald Trump likes to call his political opponents crazy, as in ‘crazy Nancy Pelosi,’ so why is he hanging out with 9/11 conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer?” laments a recent Wall Street Magazine editorial, “Is He Trying to Lose the Election?”

Trump is clearly not trying to lose the election. The problem is that he is completely nuts. Appealing to any standard of truth is a hopeless endeavor when trying to convince Trump, which should be reason enough not to entrust him with the vast powers of the presidency. Instead, nagging appeals to self-interest are the best the party establishment can muster.

Robinson may be a step too far for some Republicans, if only because his oddity verges on the sexual. But it’s far from clear that they find him unacceptable. Trump has already embraced Robinson, praising him as “Martin Luther King on steroids.” What’s left of their reputation to defend at this point?