What the heck happened to to the GOP?

[Fla Dem]

They GOP was wrong about a lot even in the Reagan era, but they've completely become a puppet of the Russian Czar Putin in the 21st century.

Link to tweet

[Kittycatkat]

1. Teabaggers

[Mr. Ected]

2. This is what happens when the soulless sell their souls

Their tether to reality is itself imaginary.

[Flaleftist]

3. They completely lost their shit when we put a black man in the White House

Many seem to want a right-wing dictator who can imprison and kill their enemies like Putin.

[CrispyQ]

5. This: They completely lost their shit when we put a black man in the White House.

They've been drifting right my entire life, but the Obama presidency sent them over the edge. "How dare a Black man reside in our White House?" What made it worse, was he didn't fit their stereotype. He wasn't an angry Black man. He was smart, articulate, had a wonderful sense of humor, could poke fun at himself, & had a beautiful family that he was devoted to. And no scandals, sexual or political.

I love this quote:

"I've seen firsthand that being president doesn't change who you are. It reveals who you are."
~Michelle Obama

[sop]

4. The greedy, monied interests controlling the GOP have been forced to ratchet up the crazy

to remain in power as economic and social injustice created by their policies over the last forty years have become even more glaringly apparent.

[Gore1FL]

6. This started long ago.

Nixon sabotaging LBJ's Vietnam peace talks and the Southern strategy are the earliest of the modern GOP I can think of. It may go back further.

It's now grown to take over the party, but the malignancy was there the whole time.

[uponit7771]

7. Too many agencies prioritizing if they look partisan vs prioritizing doing their jobs.

[underpants]

8. Dare I quote Barry Goldwater?

[Fla Dem]

12. Yes, true. Unfortunately.

[MustLoveBeagles]

32. He was right

[hatrack]

9. Christian Fascism

They don't want to be governed, they want to be ruled.

They don't want a president, they want a king.

And Gaw-duh speaks to them.

Because he does, they know that they are righteous and correct, and everybody else is evil and wrong.

Given that, why negotiate or compromise?

Take power, by any means necessary, and hold it by any means necessary.

Gaw-duh wills it, and who are they to argue with what they themselves want?

[TxGuitar]

10. Nothing happened.

They're just saying the quiet part out loud now. They have all always been this way.

[Thunderbeast]

11. This polarization and racist corruption has ALWAYS been the American story.

From the conflicts and compromises made at the Constitutional Convention, the carnage of the Civil war, the theft of the Hayes / Tilden election, Jim Crow, Nazis filling Madison Square Garden cheered on by William Randolf Hurst, theft of elections in 2000 and 2016, and stealing two Supreme Court seats under Trump and McConnell...

Racist corporate corruption by conservatives IS the core American story.

It is no wonder they they don't want history taught in schools.

[LakeArenal]

13. Power, greed, corruption and blackmail.

[SoonerPride]

14. They are the same as the Reagan republicans

Just more open about it.

Reagan spoke in dog whistles. He announced his candidacy at a place that was a nod the KKK.

Now they are just openly racist traitors.

But they are the same lot.

I see no difference at all.

[Buckeyeblue]

19. Yes. They seem more religious

Also, we have a lot less union workers. And the retired union workers are dying off. The generation that thought it tacky to talk about religion is dying off. Christian Facisist have tapped into uneducated white people and have lead them to believe their shortcomings are not their fault and their anger and hate is in line with god's will.

These people are unrelenting and they are too dumb to know they are working against their own best interests. And smart politicians are more than willing to do their bidding.

[haele]

26. They are taught to believe that suffering on earth is storing treasure in heaven.

So they'd be willing to suffer a lot (and let their children suffer, too) now during their short time on earth if they can be in heaven, staying in their own big fancy house with everything they want and all their loved ones and friends around them in perpetuaty.
They can look out over hell and watch the torments of all the sinners and those rich folk and bosses that tormented them in life because they fought and suffered for the Lord.
That's what drives them. That's what allows them to accept the cruelty and stupidity their "preachers" inject into their lives. That "storing up treasure in heaven bullshit.

Haele

[Buckeyeblue]

28. There is no way to rationally communicate with someone that believes such things

And maybe we shouldn't waste our time even trying to.

[Emile]

17. Newt Gingrich EOM.

[old as dirt]

18. It's always good to have a baseline...

...from which to make comparisons.

Some religious advice from a Republican Governor. (No, seriously!)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218324899

[BlueWavePsych]

20. Kick

[we can do it]

21. They've been assholes all along?

[Brainfodder]

22. Korruption?

[Baked Potato]

23. President Obama. Nt

[Algernon Moncrieff]

24. In no particular order: 1) A black President

2) the end of the fairness doctrine and the rise of righty radio
3) the loss of George HW Bush to Bill Clinton - their wisdom was that the adultery made that impossible
4) bitterness over Iran Contra
5) the crumbling of mainstream Protestantism and the rise of the nondenominational megachurches
6) Fox News
7) the death of print media and the rise of infotainment and social media
8) culture-war/movement conservatives had a shopping list. They liked the Bushes and Regan, but Trump got much of their list done
9) changing demographics and the fear of the loss of white control. This is especially evident in parts of the country with overwhelmingly white populations.
10) 9-11. After the 90s and the end of the cold war, security concerns took a back seat. Then we felt vulnerable when the planes hit the towers and the Pentagon. That renewed fervor about the flag, the police, first responders, and the military.
11) White entitlement: white Americans with education = or < high school can't make a living in the way that they could before - call it 1984. They blame entitlement programs (which they feel all go to non-whites, even if they receive those entitlements); they blame illegal immigrants; they blame China; they blame government regulation (read: "the Democrat party" )
12) homophobia and transphobia
13) a desire to allow racial and religious apartheid - at least on a state by state basis
14) resentment of taxes ("Why am I paying for the insert epithets for undocumented aliens, African Americans)
15) the Tea Party
16) the spread of gun worship. Many business meetings that used to take place on the golf course now take place at the gun range
17) wealth worship
18) a mistaken belief that all problems are simple and have simple solutions. Crime? Lock 'em up or kill 'em! Poverty? tell em' to get off their butts and get jobs. Problems in other nations? Bomb them! Or - that any intractible issue can only be solved by the Deity. Climate Change? Only God can change the weather. His will be done.

[hunter]

25. Every Republican President from Ronald Reagan onward has been some kind of meat puppet.

The modern Republican business model is that their front men need to be empty headed and easily manipulated fools like Reagan or Clarence Thomas, or people with such skeletons in their closet that they can be easily blackmailed. George H.W. Bush had multiple closets full of skeletons. Trump is a fool who was easily bought.

I think people who trace the corruption back to Nixon are wrong. Nixon was the loose cannon that scared the shit out of the fascist leaders of the Republican Party. Ever since then they've kept a very short leash on their candidates.

[BlueNProud]

27. After Gingrich they stopped even trying to tell the truth. All culture war all the time.

[JHB]

29. The alliance of the Conservative Movement and the Religious Right

Two sets of sanctimonious zealots who scorn compromise and who have a Grand Vision of The Way Things Ought To Be.

They're both on a holy mission to not merely stand athwart history and shout "Stop", but to force it back to the social and legal structure of the 19th century and the Gilded Age. Any and every means to securing that end is allowable.

And since a lot of those means drive money into their pockets, there's no downside as far as they're concerned.

[Eko]

30. This is what happened.

[Elessar Zappa]

31. They've been awful for decades.

They’re just more honest about it now, that’s all.