What’s Happened to the GOP?

When I was a conservative player in the Grand Old Party it was easy to be a Republican. Ike was a god and Reagan was our guy. Everybody liked Ronnie. I voted for him three times. We believed in balanced budgets and equal opportunity to succeed. Immigrants were a good thing and minorities didn’t bother us.

We didn’t agree with Democrats much, but we never considered them enemies. Our enemies were Communist dictatorships and we fought them. We relied on our allies to watch our six. We won the Cold War. Damn we were good.

What the GOP has become is hard to describe. It’s like after we won the Cold War Republicans needed somebody to fear and hate, so they turned inward. Americans not like them became fair game. When Clinton ran for office, the GOP went batshit crazy with hatred. Gerald Ford asked, “What have they done to my party?” Reagan became a recluse.

Trump is a manifestation of the GOP’s slide to perdition. The Limbaugh’s and Coulter’s took over. Then came the Tea Party, Glen Beck, and FOX. The GOP became a bionic monster of hate and fear. That’s where we are now. Is there a way out? I don’t know. Hate is a seductive mistress. Once one succumbs life becomes a self eating watermelon.

 

I left when they pardoned Nixon.

tRump has come and he will go, but he isn't the real problem, he's just a symptom. I think the real problem involves critical thinking and the lack of respect for honesty.

 

I left the GOP after Reagan. It just got too weird. I couldn't stand Clinton, so I registered as Independent. Neither party really appeals to me - too much about party, and not enough about problem solving.

 

I watched it start with the emergence of the Ditto-Head movement. I remember Rush as a comedic, Howard Stern like shock jock out of Sacramento California in the late ‘80s. He was then coopted by well heeled right wing think tanks and fed scripted disinformation and given a nationwide platform to operate from. He went from a guy who never even registered to vote until after Reagan was out of office to the most influential person in GOP politics in a couple years. Since then, the GOP has steadily moved down the path of outright hate for their opposition. Limbaugh and his benefactors built an empire by fomenting hatred for Bill and Hillary Clinton then Obama while working with hate groups, conspiracy nuts and now foreign trolls. The party of Lincoln, Taft, Hoover, Ike and Reagan is dead. Trumps emergence is a result of Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Breitbart and the advent of mass scale effective fake news outlets. Quite a phenomenon to behold.

 

Faux and right wing talk radio happened. The radicalization of the party ensued..........largely due to the disinformation spewed by the former.

 

Interesting. The claim is that Fox is extremely biased and not to be believed. Then they something anti-Trump. Now they are telling the truth and Fox has shifted. The left's opinion of Fox changes with the wind direction. They believe or do not believe based on what they want to hear, not on what they do hear.

 

Faux has been, is, and always will be a propaganda arm of the GOP. It does what Roger Ailes designed it to do, misinform by means of dis-infotainment.

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsLiesOfTheDay/

 

Trump tweeted, “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

Trump resumed his attack on the "squad" the next day. "If you are not happy, if you are complaining all the time, you can leave. These are people that in my opinion hate our country."

The obligatory handful of Congressional Republicans spoke out against Trump's racist and xenophobic remarks. The GOP leadership in the House and the Senate, however, are totally silent, and nothing will be done. No warnings to the President, no censure for his extremely un-presidential bigoted statements.

By their silence, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress approve of Trump's remarks.

For a card-carrying member of the Republican Party, the President's remarks and the lack of response from the leadership is very disheartening. Of course, like many moderate conservatives, the GOP abandoned me when ti nominated an imperialist to be President. I didn't abandon it.

 

The GOP got taken over by Donald Trump, but the march to the right began before that. Barry Goldwater would be considered a moderate in this climate.

 

Good post. . .thoughtful, insightful, honest. . .& sad. As a Democrat, & one who misses the cooperative efforts you describe, thanks for sharing.

 

I don't always agree with you. . .but when I do, I do.

 

When some level of balance is restored - when the pendulum swings back to sanity (be that a left or right POTUS), I'm hoping that the country (both right and left) will be able to look forward. Dwelling on the Trump era will do nothing for us. I'm saddened to see what has happened to the Republican party, but keep hope that it will bounce back.

 

George Will's assessment of the GOP today:

"I believe that what this president has done to our culture, to our civic discourse ... you cannot unring these bells and you cannot unsay what he has said, and you cannot change that he has now in a very short time made it seem normal for schoolboy taunts and obvious lies to be spun out in a constant stream. I think this will do more lasting damage than Richard Nixon's surreptitious burglaries did."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/donald-trump-george-will-presidency/index.html

 

What happened to the GOP?

A reaction of what happened to the Dems. The Democratic base used to be the white working class. They turned away from the white working class to embrace racial and sexual minorities. The Repubs offered a home to the white working class.

Trump is the logical conclusion to this shifting of alliances which have been ongoing for fifty years.

There is no pendulum to swing back. Whites will increasingly be driven out of the Democratic party to be absorbed by the Republicans. Eventually there will be a race war.

 

Which, of course, explains why Trump is the most unpopular President in modern American history, and he loses to Biden by ten points.

 

With Putin as his patron, Trump is acting very much like a Russian agent. He is making a mockery of the Office of the President, and it is obvious that he is racist and xenophobic. He is friendly with communist dictators while vexing our allies and weakening NATO, Putin's number one enemy.

Still, Trump should not be impeached. Why? First, it would be an exercise in futility. Obviously, Trump Republicans in the Senate always go along with what Trump says and does even when Trump is weakening the powers of the Senate. No way will they convict Trump in a Senate trial, and Trump could become a martyr, Good Lord. Trump wants to be impeached. He is trying to be impeached. It is his only chance in 2020.

So, secondly, let Trump hang himself along with the Republican Party that supports him no matter what. The past three days prove that without a doubt. The way Trump is going he is so weakening himself, his administration, and his party, the Republicans may not regain the Oval Office for a generation. Don't impeach. When the other side is going out of its way to destroy itself, don't interfere.

We all know Trump is buffoon. Even his fans who are completely frustrated trying to defend him know this. So, he can't do anymore harm. Nobody takes seriously what he says. We just have to weather through the next 16 1/2 months. With Trump entertaining us with his moronic remarks, it will go by fast.

I can still remember when Trump told a huge television audience that George Washington's Continental Army captured enemy airports. Come on, now that is funny.

 

Really? Goldwater opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

 

Republicans are weary of Trump and even his supporters wish the president would 'shut the F up"

 

Minorities still don't bother nor do immigrants, what does bother us is people sneaking across the border in unprecedented numbers whose only qualificatation for entry is a willingness to vote Democrat and become involved in and internecine round of genocidal identity politics, and furnish leftist asses with the a helpless under class to exploit for votes.

 

When they tell it as it actually is, they gain some credibility.

 

What willingness to vote Democratic? That is not an entry qualification. The treatment that they are receiving upon entry is despicable
and will serve nobody.

 

Because he felt it was unconstitutional. Not necessarily because he was against civil rights.

https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014...ties-of-african-americans-and-will-creat.html

 

I left the GOP when it became glaringly obvious they were pursuing the same ends as Dems and Progressives just at a little different pace and using slightly different methods.

Never Trump RINO Republican politicians who claim to dislike progressivism confuse the hedoublehockeysticks out of me. They are all a bunch of authoritarians who want to use citizens for their gain. I just want them all to leave me alone.

I believe you’re on the right track if neither party appeals.

 

In other words when they say something you agree with.

 

1. Actually, the Democratic base embraced the ideals of the Declaration of Independence & the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution that proclaimed equality of individuals, equality under the law, & the recognition, acceptance & practice of civil rights within society.
2. The Republicans offered a home to those whites incapable of living up to the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence & the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. Those whites carried their personal prejudices & racist attitudes into the Republican Party & infected it. That's why that party has become the party of Trump, who clearly favors whites only, & even gives public support to white supremacist organizations.
3. Both parties are STILL EVOLVING. There is no "conclusion" of that change here. Who knows where it will lead next.
4. If America continues being solidly racist as you seem to believe, then it may lead to where you predict. I'm hoping Americans are becoming far less racist in their attitudes toward each other, & we'll avoid such a senseless & dismal outcome.