You give them far too little credit. Most of these people are not stupid, just often massively confused about what they can allow themselves to say out loud in public without hurting their (re)election chances. They know full well what they are doing, and for whom.

They are fucking evil misantropic fascist shitbags.

I suppose I could have clarified by differentiating between "Republican leaders" and "Republican followers" - the latter group being largely irrelevant to discussion because they'll believe and regurgitate whatever the first group tells them to. So by "they" in this case, I mean billionaires, politicians, and "influencers" of those philosophies