When will Republicans take their party back from the Bible thumpers?

It seems to me that in the past 20 years the Republican party has shifted to the extreme right wing, and has been overrun with authoritarian christian fundamentalists. When will sane, educated Republicans purge their party of the religious crazies and the anti-intellectual fringe? Remember the time when Republican conservatives were as intellectual as William Buckley? Now we have Michelle Bachaman. What happened? I have lost count of the number of x-Republicans I have met that are now Independents or Libertarians, because the Republican Party has been taken over by idiot religious radicals. When will sane republicans take back their party?