When President Gerald Ford had to fight for the Presidential Nomination in 1976 against the former Governor of California Ronald Reagan, establishment Republicans dismissed the former actor as a right wing nut job who, like Barry Goldwater, wanted to make Social Security voluntary. Well Reagan almost took the nomination from Ford and was President five years later after defeating President Carter in a landslide. Reagan then proceeded to take the national debt which had grown to one trillion in the nation's first 204 years to four.
In 1992, Patrick Buchanan challenged President George HW Bush for the presidential nomination on a program that can be considered a rough draft of the Trump Program. Buchanan did not win but his culture war opening night speech at the Republican Convention made the Republicans a bitter pill for voters to swallow as Bill Clinton won the Presidency in a three way race.
In 1994, Newt Gingrich, a right wing Congressman from Georgia who said ketchup should count as a vegetable for school lunches was able to launch a conservative Republican Revolution based on his Contract with America that brought zealots like Rick Santorium into the Senate. It should be noted that this Republican Landslide was assisted by low voter turnout and a high number of Democrat retirees, especially in the South.
In 1996, Senator Bob Dole fought Patrick Buchanan after Buchanan scored an upset win in New Hampshire for what he said was a fight for the "soul of the Republican Party." Republicans were looked on as so right wing that the intellectual inspiration for the Reagan Revolution, 1964 Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater endorsed Bill Clinton for his re election over the once right wing, now mainstream, Dole.
George W. Bush pledged to be a compassionate conservative but outside of some big ticket items like No Child Left Behind and the Prescription Drug Benefit, cut most other social programs and he doubled down on Reagan's supply side voodoo (his fathers phrase) with two tax cuts, two wars, and housing policies that propelled us into the Great Recession. One wonders what voters were thinking after the eight years of economic prosperity of Bill Clinton. Despite the Lewinsky Scandal that plagued Clinton (he left office with a popularity rating that rivaled Reagan), Al Gore should not have had to have campaigned.
The 2010 Tea Party Wave fueled by people who thought the government did not help them enough decided to reward the party that got the country into the fiscal mess because the Republican candidates appeared as false prophets and appealed to their primal natures. Fortunately, Democrats were able to stop the more looney candidates from prevailing but enough won to stop the progress the Obama Administration was making and caused our national credit rating to be dropped.
2014 Came and again the people sat on their laurels as more conservative elements like Tom Cotton won Senate Senates.
Along came 2016 and despite a nearly three million vote popular victory by Hillary Clinton, disgruntled people in the Rust Belt felt that ultimate false prophet, a 70 year old four time bankrupt and thrice married reality tv show host was really the one who had their best interests at heart. Now we have an occupant in the White House who is averse to the truth that is pursuing policies that even George W. Bush chastised.
And it is not over. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, two right wing conservatives, are retiring from the Senate. Who is going to replace them? From Alabama, we may have homophobic gun loving and Anti Muslim Roy Moore waiting in the wings. In Arizona, we have Kelli Ward, another darling of the alt right waiting. In Tennessee, we have Marsha Blackburn who is no pragmatic moderate.
We have a Republican Party that has met what I would call the Primal Right. This is a party that is very tribal, vulgar, primitive, and dangerous. Ronald Reagan would probably go back to being a Democrat if he was alive to see this lot. Democrats of all stripes (Progressives, Centrists, and even Mainstream Conservatives) need to put their differences aside and unite against this plague that has swallowed up the party of Lincoln. Otherwise, all the social progress over the last 100 years will go away and our country will descend into an Age of Reactionism not seen in human history.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-flake-is-out-and-roy-moore-is-in-heaven-help-us/2017/10/25/e22d0eb8-b9d1-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.e6d778fcb2f1
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