Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

Although Trump with his crudity, vulgarity, boastful ignorance, r****m and misogyny has proven more than the Republican establishment expected and could effectively control, they have been setting the stage for him for half a century.

Trump implemented their agenda of corporate deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, but moved further, opening the party to r****ts, white nationalists and neo-N**is. H**e speech has morphed easily into violent acts of mailed bombs and a synagogue massacre.
...

The party of Abraham Lincoln, who dedicated his life so the “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” should not perish, has become under Donald Trump the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

He has released the demons from their dark corners. It won’t be easy to shut the doors again.


http://theconversation.com/the-republican-party-and-the-undermining-of-american-democracy-106241
November 18, 2018

The t***sformation of the Republican party from a recognizable centre-right conservative political party to what it has become under Donald Trump began a half century ago.

It started with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to break the old Democratic “solid South” by capturing white v**ers angered by the Civil Rights movement and the passage of the Civil Rights and V****g Rights Acts.

Two generations have passed, and the South has become solidly Republican. The economic conservatism of an earlier generation of Republicans has become more extreme, and is now fused with moral fervour by the promotion of culture wars in close alliance with the religious right.

Trump may have executed a hostile takeover of the GOP, but the party has been laying the groundwork for decades, and most of its leaders and base have passionately embraced him.

The reduction of regulations and of progressive income and corporate taxes by successive administrations from Ronald Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton to Trump have contributed to a new gilded age with yawning income ine******y and harsh attitudes about social legislation.

The courts, packed with reliably conservative justices, have aided and abetted a long-term assault by Republican state and federal administrations on labour unions, labour policies and legislation protecting worker rights and interests, leaving the United States with the lowest minimum wage among all advanced industrial nations.

Social services gutted
So-called “fiscal conservatism” and the pursuit of balanced budgets through tax cuts have gutted infrastructure, public education and social services. It has also led to the unprecedented crisis of more than two trillion dollars in unpaid student debt, in many cases for programs never completed, that is a critical component of growing economic insecurity.

Republican administrations at the state and federal level have sought to reverse civil and v****g rights laws, and in their place have pushed through measures to control and suppress the v**e aimed clearly at racial and ethnic minorities and the poor.

All this is redolent of post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws in the Old South that erased the effects of emancipation and post-Civil War rebuilding. The violent clashes over the removal of public memorials to “Confederate heroes” are a concrete reminder of that effort.

V**er suppression was reinforced by gerrymandering of congressional districts that detached parts of racially and ethnically diverse cities and attached them to largely white exurbia, offsetting the Republican inability to carry any of the country’s 198 metropolitan areas, centres of American cultural and economic dynamism, in recent p**********l e******ns.

In a manner similar to that of right-wing nationalist governments in the increasingly turbulent decades from 1919 to 1939, between the two World Wars and now again in contemporary Europe, the Republicans have reacted to the global economic crisis, growing ine******y, the insecurities of class and the growing global refugee crisis by scapegoating racial and ethnic minorities, migrants, women and sexual minorities struggling for equal rights.

‘Political correctness’
These struggles are dismissed on moral grounds to appeal to the religious right. They’re portrayed as the political tools of liberal elites seeking to impose “political correctness” and give these groups undeserved special access to goods, services and positions.

An example is the attack on affirmative action programs for racial minorities in colleges and universities across the nation. And of Donald Trump’s demand to see Barack Obama’s grades at college and Harvard Law School.

Finally, the GOP has been actively involved with right-wing media in the politics of knowledge, creating a world of f**e news and “alternative facts” that rejects reality. In this world, knowledge is a partisan construction.

Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Fox News and right-wing talk radio pundits have debased the level of political discourse with virulent personal attacks and lies about opponents, encouraging the development of extreme right media like Breitbart and the social media of r****t rants and conspiracy fantasies. All of them feel legitimized and encouraged by Trump.

Laying the groundwork
Although Trump with his crudity, vulgarity, boastful ignorance, r****m and misogyny has proven more than the Republican establishment expected and could effectively control, they have been setting the stage for him for half a century.

Trump implemented their agenda of corporate deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, but moved further, opening the party to r****ts, white nationalists and neo-N**is. H**e speech has morphed easily into violent acts of mailed bombs and a synagogue massacre.

At the same time, with his revival of the party’s old “America First” nationalism, he’s attacked free trade and the Western alliance, two of the foundations of Republican foreign policy, while toadying up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and cultivating the friendships of vicious dictators.

The party of Abraham Lincoln, who dedicated his life so the “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” should not perish, has become under Donald Trump the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

He has released the demons from their dark corners. It won’t be easy to shut the doors again.The Conversation

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Trump is not accepted by many members as being representative, even though he holds the position, of the entire party. That's about as intelligent as implying that all Dems supported HRC.

Theoretically at least, more and more v**ers are speaking out as they bother to become more aware of the diseases that plague and infect our parties.

Keenan Loc: Central Coast California

Are you implying the the Democratic Party has experienced the same t***sformation into an extremist party bent on destroying our institutions and democratic traditions, mirroring what has happened to the GOP? You seem to be frequently implying something along those lines. If so, I think you need to re-think that proposition. By any objective measure, whether looking at the party platform over the last few decades, or the preferences of the base of v**ers, The Democratic Party has NOT become more extreme, but in some ways has actually moved to the center over the last few decades. It's the Democratic Party, under centrist Clinton, that eliminated "welfare as we know it", remember? It's the Democratic Party centrists who pushed for lots of free trade agreements. It's the Democratic Party that has been either balancing the budget, or reducing the federal deficits and cleaning up the economic messes left by Republican administrations.

The polarization that has happened is mainly a story of the Republican Party's drastic lurch to the hard right, moving from a center right party, to a white nationalist religious nutcase authoritarian f*****t party, while Democratic Party has actually adopted many of the GOP's formerly center-right policies.

I see a tendency by some to assert a false equivalency of the Republican and Democratic parties both supposedly moving to the opposite extreme fringes, which just isn't supported by the facts.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Poor KKKeenan, thinks that poking the same slain moonbat mythology will somehow bring it back and give it credibility.

Rose42

I personally don't know any republicans who do accept him.

There are a lot of opinions out there who believe the left has swung too far left. (and they are liberals)

We need more libertarians out there. Or at least independents. The founders didn't want two parties and foresaw this happening.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

We all have our views that can be substantiated by so called factual evidence. Then there is our biased interpretation of reality. There is no black and white and certainly much grey.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

The people are far easier to control when they are kept in the mindset of a football game ...

YORE TEEEEM BAAAAD! MYYYY TEEEEM GOOOOD!

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

Thats how we stay in this mess.

Either something is or is not true.

Gray is the color of smoke.

Facts are not open to interpretation.

Facts. They are such stubborn things.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

The forum demeanor summed up in one concise sentence.

Rose42

Ain't that the t***h!

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Many so called facts are merely the opinions of those who accept the opinions of others, typically biased to suit their intended so called facts in a supposed authoritative manner.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

I think you need a dictionary and some perusal time.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

I think you need some some objective evaluation abilities, so that makes us even.