Ok the thing is this happens specifically with transphobia so often I feel it needs a syndrome description. People literally throwing their careers and lives away for transphobia.
I say we call in Linehan Syndrome
FWIW, I got to know Nancy Mace pretty well when I got back into reporting after being an editor. She was always fairly conservative, albeit somewhat heterodox. But I realized her outright transphobia and otherwise increasingly unhinged behavior sort of happened in tandem.