| As far as I'm concerned the Republicans signed their death warrant when they decided to respond to Obama's election by ginning up the narrative of a "cold civil war" and "grassroots" right-wing reactionary movements like the Tea Party, implying Obama was such a danger to the country that an uprising would be imminent if not inevitable, were he allowed to remain in power. I believe what they wanted was to repeat the Southern Strategy by fanning the fuel of racism, xenophobia and right-wing hatred among their white base (an obvious tack to take with Obama) but the Republicans underestimated just how extreme that base had become since the Goldwater days and how unhinged the presence of a black "leftist" in the White House made them. The Tea Party, being a Republican Party proxy movement, wasn't anywhere near as radical enough as its purpose was maintaining the Republican status quo, and for all the Tea Party's talk of "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" and such in their campaign ads, wasn't going to give the right the blood in the streets that they wanted. Thus, we ended up with the reactionary movement against both the left and the mainstream right in Trumpist populism, the rise of the alt-right and embrace of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and the start of open violence by right-wing militias against black and leftist "agitators." Barring some effective, widespread counter-Conservative movement to return the party to sanity and core non-crazy-racist principles (which doesn't appear to exist) the Republicans have no alternative now but to ride the Trump train all the way to the end, or else split and form another party. |
0 - https://www.ushistory.org/us/58e.asp
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanawha_County_textbook_contro...