Two names stick out especially in my mind Bill Paxon and his wife Susan Malanori. Both were NY state congress critters. Susan was part of the 1996 Convention Charade remember? By that time the GOP was trying to sell us Liberal Lite in the Bob Dole Snake Oil Show? It happened that quick and is a lot of the reason the damage Clinton was doing went unchecked especially on such matters as military cutbacks. The GOP had a sitting majority for 6 of Clinton's 8 years in office.
In the senate side it was Lott who was brokering deals that never needed to be made and a much more political savvy person than me caught on to it early on. It was Lotts former friend Paul Weyrich who began saying there was a sell out underway. Again IIRC this also was before the 1996 elections. The GOP became everything we elected them not to be.
I think part of the problem was they mistakenly thought that since Democrats jumped the fence to help put the GOP in power that people wanted a Liberal GOP. No they went to the GOP because the DEM Party was too liberal. Most were what can best be described as Wallace Democrats which were Conservatives with no place left to go. A sizable other portion were the Joneses type Democrats who crossed the party to become Republicans because it was the thing to do at the time. They found refuge with the Rockefeller wing of the GOP and have remained there. That is mostly the Rudy for POTUS crowd. Thus the reason you hear some very liberal ideas coming from supposedly Republicans. That's just my take on it though.