Is there a synonym of "transcend" that has negative connotations

I want to say something like, "The argumentative scene in politics has transcended the once epistemological purpose of rhetoric and debate, in favor of treating rhetoric as a tool, debate as a means to an end other than truth and with a focus on winning the discussion, instead of learning from it."

Anyways, this transcendence is meant negatively, but I've pretty much only heard transcend in positive and/or awe-inspiring settings. Sure, there's the transcend sanity, but then the negative context is pretty obvious, given the negative connotations with insanity. However, that sentence there does leave it a bit ambiguous whether I think this transcendence is bad or not. Perhaps someone could get a Machiavellian feel of me and think I actually like this way of discussion. So, therefore, is there a synonym of transcend that has more negative connotations?

Would “... in politics has descended from the once ...” suit your purpose?

One synonym of transcend that is almost always used in a negative sense is overshoot:

[Merriam-Webster]
1 : to pass swiftly beyond
2 : to shoot or pass over or beyond so as to miss

In other words, while transcend goes beyond something in a good way, overshoot goes too far beyond something.

Used in the example sentence:

The argumentative scene in politics has overshot the once epistemological purpose of rhetoric and debate, in favor of treating rhetoric as a tool, debate as a means to an end other than truth and with a focus on winning the discussion, instead of learning from it.

Note that Merriam-Webster specifically lists overshoot as a synonym of transcend in the same sense as used in the question (I have emphasized the word):

2 to go beyond the limit of
   // a person who believes that any true understanding of God transcends human intelligence

Synonyms for transcend
break, exceed, outreach, outrun, overpass, overreach, overrun, overshoot, overstep, surpass

Of all those synonyms, overshoot is the only one that has both a negative connotation and sounds natural in the context of the example sentence.