How the GOP’s Double Life Blew Up in Its Face

[Zorro]

For 60 years now, the Republican party has managed to hold together an unlikely coalition of the business elite with angry, xenophobic, racist lower- to middle-class white voters. The GOP has maintained the veneer of a normal, respectable political party while plumbing the depths of hatred, crassly manipulating public opinion and spreading outrageous conspiracy theories. Like a seemingly distinguished man hiding a secret life of sin, the GOP has managed to conceal its more openly ugly side in plain sight – greatly enabled by the media and years of false equivalence reporting.

Today the media is struggling with how to tell the story of Trump’s demolition of the GOP, having spent so many years playing down the role of the nativist faction of the party in the interest of “balance” – i.e., the terror of ever being accused of being liberal. It is therefore important that we be as clear and straightforward as possible in exposing and demanding coverage of the truth.

No, Trump and his hateful minions did not suddenly descend from outer space to invade America in 2015. Rather, they have been purposely and assiduously cultivated by conservative elites since the 1950s. Indeed, the conservative base is so secure in its convictions, so well organized and so motivated precisely because they are the armies of voters that the GOP has been training and empowering for decades.

In other words, what we are seeing in the Republican party today is not truly a war of two opposing factions but the spectacle of the faction that has long been used by the other finally claiming the driver’s seat. Election after election, Republicans have stirred up their masses with all kinds of absurd propaganda in order to get them to vote for policies that overwhelmingly favor corporations and the wealthy. This time, the nativists want to put their man in the White House to make sure they don’t get fooled again.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/15/1560134/-How-the-GOP-s-Double-Life-Blew-Up-in-Its-Face

Good summary of how the GOP got to where they are today.

[JNelson6563]

1. Dog whistles not enough for the base anymore. That's too weak for them.

Like any addiction really. Tolerance goes up so stronger doses needed.

[Mme. Defarge]

2. Good Article!

"Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” (2004) arguably did the best job of summing up this strategy as it stood in the 1990s – employing the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck to rile up the Republican base to fight cultural wars against “liberal elites” while disregarding their own economic interests. But a moment’s reflection should reveal that this sort of scorched earth approach is, by its very nature, unsustainable. Hatred and anger cannot feed, clothe or house anyone – unless they are taken to the most horrific extremes of ethnic cleansing, where the means of existence are stolen from other groups in the most barbaric manner.

And that brings us to Trump."

[cyberswede]

3. Good read for sure - thanks for posting!

[Firestorm49]

4. Good Job

Zorro - well written and straight to the point. Good job. My thoughts exactly.

[underpants]

5. Excellent history of their party

I will say that the writer missed/left out Rev. Moon's influence (and money) in the reformation after Nixon. He was a huge donor to the Regan Revolution including making Falwell appear successful and demanding the GAY part of God Guns and Gays.

[Binkie The Clown]

6. " Like a seemingly distinguished man hiding a secret life of sin"

Hmmm. Like so many "seemingly distinguished" Republican politicians who have been caught in one "secret life of sin" after another.

How fitting that the party with "a secret life of sin" is home to so many individuals with "a secret life of sin."