The e-GOP has done it several times to conservative candidates. Nelson Rockefeller did it on prime-time television during a 1964 Cow Palace convention speech he was afforded as a courtesy by the Goldwater people. He ripped Barry's delegates as "fascists" and compared them to the roaring mobs of the Nazi spectaculars of the 1930's. Absolutely loathesome behavior by the then-governor of New York, and joined in by then-governor of Pennsylvania Bill Scranton.
Lyndon Johnson made maximum use of the ammo Rocky and Scranton had afforded him with their public repudiation of the party's nominee (the Main Street crowd being then sick of the smoke-filled-room politics of Rocky, Nixon, Ike, and others since 1952, which led directly to AuH2O's tidal wave), and he used it (and lots of unfair tactics, like using the FBI to bug Barry's campaign plane, the same tactics the WaPo lib-bigots hammered Dick Nixon over) to crush Goldwater 65-35 in the general.
So when you want to talk about loathesome behavior by the e-GOP or "Old Stalwarts" or "good-government Republicans" or WETF they're calling themselves nowadays, just remember that it is long-running, indefatigably emetic, and goes back to the 1880's. And it's all one thing that has never been fixed about this party.
Despicable. This makes me want to support D. Trump even more.