The Advanced Politics Knowers, the people who are paid to know and explain things to you, rarely bother to explain to voters just what Republicans think about things, even when Republicans aren't exactly hiding it. I suspect this is, in part, due to the fact that the one politician superpower is telling people what they want to hear, and the elite level superpower is telling journalists, specifically, what they want to hear. On background, almost every Republican is a reasonable Republican.
All the horrific stuff? They mean it.