Conservatives are afraid. They (at least the professionals and the GOP as an organisation) are well aware that they are on course to get irrelevent in the future. Not only are their politicians getting older, their voter base is getting older and shrinking. So the try everything in the book to stay relevant: Gerrymandering, reducing access to the voting process fro people who are unlikely to vote for them, etc. And as we all know, fear, or worse, existencial dread, leads to hate for the other side, the group of people seen as their very threat to their existence.

They are basically cornered rats, clawing and biting the pest control man.