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> [M]ainstream conservatives literally voted a white supremacist into government. They almost voted a pedophile into government.
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> Sure there are jerks on the Democratic side but we tend to remove them from authority until they've shown appropriate contrition for an extended period of time.
Is it possible that you're seeing this through you own political biases? I freely admit that I generally see the issues with left-wing figures more easily than those on the right, so please don't think I'm being "whataboutist", because that's not my intention at all.
When I read the above, the first reactive thought I had was "What about Ralph Northam? He is in his college yearbook either in blackface or a Klan robe. What about Justin Fairfax? He's been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Both of them are still in their elected positions"
Of course, this isn't to say the GOP doesn't have its own members with serious problems - instead, my point is that it isn't any easier to conflate conservatives with far right extremists than it is to conflate progressives with far left extremists. From where I stand, it seems to be completely a matter of what biases the viewer holds.
That being said, The Democratic party absolutely does not take their own medicine on this one. They're just as likely to circle the wagons, I just think they're more susceptible to a particular kind of shame (though not due to any kind of moral conviction, I'd chalk it up to something more like vanity.) I'm more or less as left as they come, but the idea that the Democrats have the moral high ground when it comes to keeping their people in line doesn't square with what I've seen.
Therein lies the danger of bias and silencing "one side" of a politicial conversation. Because the mainstream media does not blast the story everywhere and call for their heads, bad people are allowed to do bad things, even if they're members of a party that does a lot of good things.
The alt-right label, for example, has fuzzy boundaries, and this is leveraged to apply that label to anyone without feeling the need to verify the accused's position or statements in more detail. It could be argued that the right has similar issues around applying the label of 'communist', 'socialist', etc.
The intent in these cases is to cordon the accused off, lighting a signal flare that their ideas are too extreme to be worth considering. This causes real harm to real ability to discuss things in the moderate spectrum if everyone is being labeled as being at the edges.