[glenstein]

The only part I would disagree with here is that there was a plan dating back to the George W. Bush Admin. I think "the plan" in earnest came into being between 2020 and 2024, and I don't think anyone from the Bush years would find a home in the party let alone the current administration. It's not that they had no plans necessarily, they just weren't the ones in charge anymore.

I do think the Bush years were the first major destabilization of rule of law domestically that helped create conditions for today, along with Obama's "look forward, not backward" enshrinement of it as bipartisan consensus. Bush also normalized a kind of partisan unresponsiveness to mass democratic uprisings that people used to believe were capable of influencing the government.

[Herring]

I don't like putting the blame on a "plan". Democracy is about a kind of equality among people, and the US has had a strong anti-democratic strain since slavery. Probably even feudalism before that. Once you see it, you see it everywhere and can't unsee it. There's a reason Trump's best polling issue is immigration

https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...

[JeremyNT]

Yeah viewing it as a single plan is wrong.

I think the more complete view is that the current generation of fascists learned from the Bush admin's mistakes (or, I suppose you could say, they feel unshackled by Bush era "restraint").

Combined with a cult of personality frontman to distract, aided by a captured media ecosystem and a radicalized judiciary, they are empowered to build on the shoulders of giants.

It was not self evident in the 00's that we would end up with Miller/Vought running the show - the actual form could have been something completely different. Indeed, Rove himself recently popped back up to chastise them!