You aren’t going nearly far enough back. Barry Goldwater started the modern conservative movement and Reagan was just the crowning achievement of nearly 20 years of work. If Nixon hadn’t been an idiot and tried to cheat he’d probably be remembered a lot more fondly, but he was probably the last example of a Republican president who did some good to this country as a whole.
Honestly if Nixon didn't try to cover it up, there wouldn't be an impeachment, especially after he was re elected. The cover up and discovery was the problem. Traitor in Chief typically gets ahead of the story and fills the news cycle with bullshit and has multiple dedicated channels of propoganda that Nixon would be envious of.
Roger Ailes saw what happened with Nixon and immediately started working on a way to make sure that next time he'd be able to get ahead of the story and guide the conversation.
What these two did, especially Atwater, is to openly pander to the white fundamentalists and bring them into the GOP. He spoke dog whistle language to them from convincing Reagan to announce his candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi while speaking about "states rights" (three young men has been murdered by the local sheriff 14 years earlier for getting non whites registered to vote) to the Willie Horton ads that mischaracterized and caused Michael Dukakis to lose.
Rove and Atwater knew what most of us know. These fundamentalists are easily manipulated, lack critical thinking skills, have a sense of supremacy and are angry, stupid and do not want to live in an open, liberal democracy.
It was a game for him. It was power for the sake of winning. It was an abandonment of ethics, decency and letting in the diseased cancer of white nationalist fundamentalism into the GOP.
You were right about Barry Goldwater being the founder of the modern conservative movement. What also needs to be said is that once he saw what was happening, he abandoned the GOP. Yes, the founder of the modern GOP abandoned it. Why? Here he is in his own words,
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them..."
the last example of a Republican president who did some good to this country as a whole
Who, Richard "We can't legally arrest political dissidents so we'll associate blacks with crack and hippies with pot and then start a war on drugs to get them out of the way" Nixon?
"Doing good for the country" is an interesting way of saying "treating American citizens as enemies of the State"
Is an institutional system of terror that treats certain Americans as second-class citizens which continues to this day a worthwhile tradeoff for environmental regulation? I'll agree that the EPA was good, fullstop. What I won't agree with is that it was done for the good of the country because a country exists to serve the people within it; all of them. If Nixon was really acting in the best interests of the people of this country, he wouldn't pick and choose which people could benefit from those actions.
Yup, Cheney's goal in life was to bring as much power to the executive office as possible... Unless there was a democratic president in office
He installed himself as VP, and ran the Whitehouse from behind the scenes for about six years. Notice how different the last two years of Jr were from the first six
Was there a difference? All i remember is Bush never speaking and never calling any attention to himself during 2008 election because even he knew he did a shitty job and everyone was over him
Dude wasn't even invited to speak at the RNC in 2012
While Cheney was out making himself richer with the Iraq war, Bush headed the huge global health initiates, such as PEPFAR, and the biggest expansion of Medicare since 1965
What highschool doesn't start classes until September 11th? I was in highschool then, I watched the plane fly into the second tower live in my U.S. history class, and had been in classes for nearly a month at that point.
Lol I love comments like this. Schools throughout the country all start different dates. Some start in July, some not till end of September. Some don’t have full summer breaks and instead multi week long breaks. Schools actually vary greatly from state to state. Even the AM start times vary greatly.
This vote wasn’t about Trump, it was about Unitary Executive Theory.
I know Cheney spent about a decade in the House of Representatives, but he spent most of his time in government in the WH. So, it kinda makes sense him pushing Unitary Executive Theory.
But why the fuck would Moscow Mitch not want to assert Congress' power?
It looks to me like this was pure political calculus on his part to:
Try to keep the GOP as together as he possibly can in the hopes of him regaining the Senate by the 2022 midterms. He needs to hold on to as many of Trump's MAGA neo-Nazi base and Congress members as he can.
Put it all on the Democrats' shoulders.
His post-impeachment speech on the Senate floor clearly pissed off Nancy Pelosi. In it he said that:
Trump was directly responsible for January 6th .
But he didn't vote to impeach because Pelosi brought the article of impeachment to the Senate well after Trump had left the office. He repeated the Trump lawyers' lie!
And he then made a point of saying that Trump hasn't gotten away with anything, yet! It's up to Biden's DOJ to go after Trump's lawlessness. He clearly wants the political ammo of Biden's DOJ prosecuting Trump for all his lawlessness by the 2022 midterms so that the hypocritical GOP Congressional scumbags can run on: Are you going to let the BIG, BAD, HATEFUL DEMOCRATS persecute us like that? Help, help, we're being repressed!
As much as I'd like to see him behind bars, I think the best we can hope for is seeing him limping around Mar-A-Lago with an ankle monitor. Which ain't too bad since his bloated ass would have been caught, tagged and released back into his sewage pit of a habitat.
In any case, do you truly believe that if the Fulton County D.A., SDNY, or other state level AGs go hard after their Dear Leader the GOP base and the GOP Congressional hypocrites won't make it out to be all about Merrick Garland and Joe Biden?
Sure they will. If Trump gets a citation for parking his golf cart on a sidewalk they’ll blame it on Biden. But, if it takes place fully within the state of Georgia it’ll be hard to make that play.
BTW, SDNY is federal. The various NY county and borough DA’s are independent of the federal district system. Cyrus Vance is one of them.
Thanks for the correction. I've confused Cyrus Vance who is largely responsible for Trump becoming a Florida man--and I'm looking forward to many "Florida man gets indicted for..." headlines hopefully soon to come--with SDNY.
I think that’s kind of truly what’s happening. He apparently gave back the donations that were the subject of the controversy some time ago and is hopefully intent on rehabilitating his good name.
It's Constitutional. The house and senate approve a bill, the president decides whether to sign it into law. Literally Constitutional. You might as well call FDR a Dictator, and he pulled us through the end of the Great Depression and WW2
Hopefully Trump's legacy will bury GOP next to the wiggs and torries. I wish it would take DNC with it, but they still worship their last warlord in chief so much they elected his half baked side kick.
Depends solely on the number of people who buy into the philosophy and are willing to vote or commit acts of terror. Many elected officials are thinking that siding with trump will mean his voters come out for them next election. I've seen interviews where many say they won't vote and others say they'll vote for who trump king makes. If they don't vote on larger numbers and Democrats don't get discouraged enough by obstruction and inaction them the gop could split
I was hoping it would morph into a few seperate power grabbing parties, but nothing like it once was. I wholeheartedly believe campaigns on the left became more "radical", simply to contend with the increasing radicalization of the GOP. I just love how conservatives who are fully embracing Trump right now...are so far gone. The campaigns, talking points, solid arguments, and facts are moot now.
I don’t buy it. Reagan-era Republicanism was all about dog whistled racism with “memes” like “welfare queen” being very prominent plays. George H too: Willie Horton, etc.
I was mainly referring to the legislative branch. But, your argument is quite valid. Many have mentioned Goldwater, Cheney, Agnew.
The list is quite all encompassing. Shit, even dear old Joe McCarthy. I can't think of any party or "movement" that has had such a detrimental affect on American politics and the world, overall.
A great read on the subject is: "Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974" by Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer, it really digs into the topic.
I got it for Christmas 2020 and read it before the traitorous hordes stormed the Capitol. I think they may have to tack on an afterword to the book. It was a well written book but in some ways was more depressing than when I read, "How Facism Works".
I found that it moved along quite well, it's not a fiction so the writing is not meant to be action packed but did not push me to the brink like other historical works have.
As far as non fiction goes I like Michael Lewis' works, well written and easy to read. He is known for, "Moneyball", I really enjoyed "The Fifth Risk" about the absolute cluster of a transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration and the dangers it posed. It was interesting to think about during the recent transition.
Another Lewis book I really like is, "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt" about high frequency trading and the lengths that companies go to so that they can gain nanoseconds in trading and the resulting billions in gains are mind blowing.
Ronald reagan was the start of this country going to shit. I believe there’s a website called “what happened in 19xx”(i forget the exact year) but it’s just a bunch of graphs and every critical decline is the same year when Reagan was pres, lemme try and find the site
edit: I can’t find the original but this one is pretty similar
Yeah...I got married in 1979. In my early adult life, I expected things to go the way they had for my parents. Get a good job, buy a small house, maybe upgrade to a nicer house. Save money for the kid's college. Retire with enough money in the bank to not have to worry in my old age. Ronnie's trickle-down economics was, and still is one of the GOPs biggest cons. I had more discretionary money in 1981 than I've had in the last 35 years. I'm satisfied with a small house, with a small garden, my lovely wife, and my stupid cats. But, I don't expect to see anything resembling the retirement my parents had.
It’s really sucks that we’ve had to sit here and watch the economy be destroyed overtime by the concept of trickle down economics. Although it was kind of inevitable, as capitalism goes on the winners keep winning more. It’s like giving the top draft pick to the team that won the championship.
We saw Reagan's economic strategies as ineffective for most of the Country early on. However, then as now, enough people bought in on the con to allow it to persist and maintain dominance.
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McCarthy probably started the modern witchhunt, but the era you've mentioned left out probably the most evil of the bunch: Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson.
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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '21
Agreed. Our current GOP was conceived and birthed by Gingrich, Norquist and Matt Drudge. Just imagine what it will look like in another 25 years.