Submitted for your consideration and thoughtful responses:

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Kompromat is too specialized a category

Maybe it's money and religion that ties them together. And in sort of machine politics gone Main Street, they know they're vulnerable so they don't dare so anything. If they were ever committed to law and order it was because it kept the masses in line producing money for the wealthy.

The GOP are a political phalanx. Bound together during the Progressive Era (1900-1920 or so), fighting socialism, anarchists, workers, anyone who wanted change. We ignore the Pinkerton Era like it was anomaly. It was ubiquitous, just not extreme everywhere.

The group you speak of is politicians. Democrats know there is dirty work to be done that they couldn't enact themselves. Growth through pollution, for example. So they're content to let the GOPee do the dirty work. When that's all done we'll inherit the wreckage.