Today's Republican Party bears no resemblance to what it was even 15 years ago, although the roots of the party's current dysfunction and championing of hate and bigotry began much further back in time. Richard Nixon's implementation of the so-called "Southern Strategy" put out the welcome mat for racists and white supremacists, but for many years the "adults in the room" in the party leadership were able to keep the more virulent racists under control and largely out of view other than dog whistle messaging. Next, the Christofascists were made welcome in a low key manner under Reagan and the insanity of the party base began in earnest. Foolishly, George W. Bush threw the doors to the party wide open to religious extremists when he and Karl Rove used same sex marriage as tool to secure Bush's reelection in 2004. From that point on, the party's embrace of ignorance and bigotry became raging torrent. This insanity and war against modernity reach its apogee with the election of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer. A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP's descent to the ugly reality that it has become, something too many otherwise decent Republicans - I could name names but I will not - refuse to recognize as they continue to support a party that in fact no longer exists except in their own minds. Here are column highlights:
[A]fter nine months of party control of Congress and the White House, the Republicans have accomplished essentially nothing. They have become a party without a consensus.It would be easy to simply blame the president for the party’s disarray. Donald Trump’s aversion to policy detail, his chaotic management style and his combustible personality have all contributed to the party’s failures this year.
Yet it would also be a mistake to pin the party’s problems on Mr. Trump alone. He is not their root cause. Instead, he is an avatar of the party’s pathologies, the culmination of its cynical and shambolic trajectory over the last two decades.
Many of those issues can be traced back to the administration of George W. Bush, which functioned as an enormous political bait and switch. The 43rd president campaigned on humble foreign policy and prudent conservative solutions, but his presidency quickly became oriented almost exclusively around a political defense of the Iraq war.
This meant that domestic policy, and the realm of domestic policy expertise, became an afterthought at best, an opportunity for cynical political maneuvering at worst.
But Mr. Bush’s post-Sept. 11 popularity instilled the administration with an arrogance that extended far beyond the war itself. The president’s inner circle became convinced that the Republican Party was destined for years of unbroken political domination; the ambition-spoiling concerns of the “reality-based community” no longer needed to be taken into account.
National security fear-mongering and culture war controversies, especially over same-sex marriage, were employed to rally the base and ensure its loyalty, even as dissatisfaction with Mr. Bush’s governance continued to grow.
The Bush presidency, then, was both a failure and a fraud. Instead of foreign policy restraint and modest conservative governance, the Bush administration delivered a pair of endless deficit-financed wars, cynical posturing over social issues, soaring federal spending and, eventually, a large-scale emergency intervention in the economy.
Arguably as important as the particular failures themselves, however, was the way the party infrastructure — its leaders and functionaries, its activists and operators — formed a partisan phalanx around the president, playing down his flaws, if not refusing to acknowledge them. . . . by excusing Mr. Bush’s errors, Republicans radically expanded the trust deficit, creating a yawning gap between the party’s base and its elites, one that has persisted, and grown, in the years since. . . .
Mr. Bush left many voters on the right angry, resentful and suspicious — of war, of policy, of ideology, of the very idea of political solutions and leadership. It attracted hucksters and manipulators, in the media and in the activist sphere, and embraced a cast of unconventional and unqualified candidates. Republican Party elites were only too happy to exploit this inchoate energy as long as it was useful.
The defeats of both Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney left the party leaderless, and Mr. Bush’s shredded reputation meant it could not follow the course he had laid out. So the party became defined by what was left: its resentments and suspicions, its antagonisms and obsessions, its anger and its differences. It retreated into tribalism and anti-intellectualism. Eventually, the sideshow became the main event.
Mr. Trump, of course, is the biggest sideshow of them all. He exploited the gap between the base and the elites, embodying the dysfunction and disarray that already existed.
Mr. Trump’s goals have more to do with Twitter feuds and personal aggrandizement than any particular policies. Under Mr. Trump, the party’s chief internal debate is not so much about which governing vision to pursue but whether there should be one at all.
Republican voters, meanwhile, were attracted to shallow political entertainers and obviously unqualified candidates long before Mr. Trump threw his hat in the ring. Mr. Trump didn’t cause any of this. He just took advantage of it. He is the most successful huckster of the bunch.
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