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First off, it is very possible for decent people to get caught up in this. It happens because A) everyone loves being "successful" at what they do (and successful campaigning can be intoxicating), and B) they operate in a bubble, where everyone around them tells them how "good" it is that they do what they do (generally, the other side is demonized, so it looks like it's morally right, or at worst morally neutral, to go to any lengths to defeat them).
Believe it or not, most people become active Republicans because they are idealists. They want to change the world, and make it better. Many of them are not, initially anyway, far-right extremists. But as one gets deeper into the bubble, it becomes harder and harder to see the gap between the ideals and the reality, and the ideals themselves fossilize, withe the tissue of principle replaced by the rock of "us against them".
How such a person might change is for that "bubble" to burst. Either someone honest finds their way p[ast the walls of the bubble and speaks the truth, causing a crisis of conscience; or someone central to creating that bubble leaves the bubble, or some other force intervenes to disrupt the operative's life (Atwater is an example here), or the operative makes a mistake and is abandoned or held distant by his or her former friends. Any one of these things can be enough for such an operative to get a whiff of the truth about themselves.
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