How the Republican Party opened itself up to the Trump takeover

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Washington in 2020 often beggars belief: an American President answering a deadly pandemic with ignorance, inflaming racial unrest with racism, stoking violent confrontations while his fearful party stands mute.

Merely observing those realities provokes familiar complaints. President Donald Trump and his allies insist that mainstream journalists offer "fake news" reflecting "bias" against the older, rural, conservative, Christian, White, working-class adherents of the modern GOP.

But what if the accounting comes from one of the Republican Party's most accomplished political strategists? In fact, it has.

Consider "It Was All A Lie," from one of the most accomplished GOP strategists, disillusioned Republican ad-maker Stuart Stevens -- an insider provoked by Trump to reconsider his life's work.

He casts Trump as not an aberration but rather the culmination of decades-long evolution within the GOP. Having advised four Republican presidential nominees and dozens of winning Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, Stevens blends diagnosis of the party's ills with confession for having fostered them.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-the-republican-party-opened-itself-up-to-the-trump-takeover/ar-BB17cFLr?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=DELLDHP

[Midnight Writer]

1. Trump is absolutely the culmination of decades of appeals to cranks.

Does anyone think we would be better off with a Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio?

They may not be as gauche as Trump, but I believe we would see the same policies, the same judges, and the same screw the common folk let's take care of the rich priorities.

[love_katz]

2. Exactly.

I used to think that the Republican party beginning its down hill slide as having begun with Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater and their abhorrent Southern strategy. However, a friend posted something that shows me that it began long before that. He thought it began with the assassination of President Kennedy, but someone else posted that it began before that. During the 1950's there was the McCarthy era, with its Red baiting strategies. The Republicans have made a long career of appealing to bigots and cranks. They have nothing to offer anyone who isn't wealthy, so the only way they can get votes is through disinformation campaigns and appeals to people's worst fears and lowest instincts.

[Sneederbunk]

3. Right wing media and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine.