When did the GOP start going to shit?

[Valmy]

Clearly it's all Lincoln's fault.

Nah. Things went fine until the dastardly villain Rutherford B Hayes came along.

[Berkut]

I don't think anyone with the ability to think would argue that the modern GOP is anything other than an embarassing dumpster fire.


If you don't think that is the case, then this thread is not for you.


But the recent spat in the Biden thread kind of surprised me. As someone who used to support GOP candidates, I didn't even think it controversial to note that the foundations for the current disaster that has become modern conservatism was laid a long, long time ago. Trump is not some aberration out of an otherwise perfectly normal party. I mean...the second place guy was Ted Fucking Cruz, after all.


So if we can all agree that the end result is something outrageously shitty....where did it start?


I think if you go back far enough you can find a time where we can reasonably say was before...say...Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would argue that what the GOP has become today had anything to do with the GOP of the Eisenhower administration, as an example.


So where did it start?

Clearly it's all Lincoln's fault.

Well that's a useful take.

[Sheilbh]

I think there are two ways of looking at it - when did it start and when did it sort of start to become inevitable.

For when it started I'd say the key period is 1976-80.

I think in that period you have Roe v Wade and the disappointment from the perspective of Christian conservatives in the Baptist in the White House. I think that allows for religious politics to align in a way behind the Southern Strategy of Nixon; I think without Roe v Wade I don't know if the Souther Strategy works. I think Roe v Wade interacts really importantly with racial politics in developing the modern Republican party.

There is also the twin failure of liberal foreign policy in Iran. America is humiliated through the embassy hostages but also America has undermined its allies and exposed itself to humiliation and weakness through sort of nebulous liberal values like "human rights". I think that leads directly to the GOP foreign policy views which is often national assertiveness which, because America has an ideological foundation, is explained in ideological terms: freedom, democracy etc. But at the same time I fairly ruthless willingness to not let those values actually have substantive impact on foreign policy so we get sophistry around totalitarian v authoritarian, the Contras, the entire Reagan administration policy to Latin America, friendship with Mubarak and other strong men etc which goes on. I think Trump is the end destination of that because he calls on the bullshit and said his idea is American assertiveness, America first and that isn't based on the foundational values but on power and explicit trade-offs.

You also have staglfation (which Carter starts to address) the lingering effects of the oil shock, government debt is a problem, interest rates soar etc. And Regan's team which eventually wins has a story - they can tell you how we got here and how to fix it. It is dismissed by Bush as "voodoo economics" but, to this day, it forms a core part of Republican ideology.

Republicans divide in 1980 - he's forgotten now but John Anderson runs as the sort of Evan MacMillan of his days, there are big rows between Bush and Reagan. Reagan is an insurgent in 1976 and by 1980 there is still an establishment v an insurgent narrative but the insurgent is the favourite. It matters more that he traced his roots, ideologically and symbolically to Goldwater, than that he possibly scuppered the re-election of a Republican president (imagine if Bernie had prepared for 2016 by running against Obama in 2012). But the insurgent wins triumphantly in the primary and the general election - I think that sets a narrative for Republicans that the solution comes from the grass-roots/outside the party establishment. Reagan's incredible charisma also sets that up as sort of the star-spangled narrative of America for Republicans, not just that it is a successful message but that it is somehow a more naturally American political framework than sort of wonkish, elitist liberalism of the Kennedy/Obama type.

The other bit it seems to me is almost meta. I think 76 to 80 is the point when the Republicans become the world's first post-modern political force. There are fewer grand coherent narratives (though Republicans still have a few) and that includes science. And instead you have opportunism and performance, because the level of discourse is all that is left - what matters is less reality in facts than reality as projected and played in the media. Economic statistics and underlying numbers are secondary to the performance of Wall Street (and literally the Douglas performance in Wall Street). The reality of American power matters less than the display of it on TV (an invasion of threat to hemispheric security: Grenada) or in the movies (basically every 80s action film). Because that level of discourse becomes reality. This still shapes Republicans - the obsession with whether politicians would say "radical Islamic terrorism" is entirely about discourse and indicates nothing about policy or reality. I think Bush I reacts against this and loses. But what becomes important is not whether someone can be a good President (Bush I) but whether they are a sort of simulacra of an American President.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think anyone with the ability to think would argue that the modern GOP is anything other than an embarassing dumpster fire.


If you don't think that is the case, then this thread is not for you.


But the recent spat in the Biden thread kind of surprised me. As someone who used to support GOP candidates, I didn't even think it controversial to note that the foundations for the current disaster that has become modern conservatism was laid a long, long time ago. Trump is not some aberration out of an otherwise perfectly normal party. I mean...the second place guy was Ted Fucking Cruz, after all.


So if we can all agree that the end result is something outrageously shitty....where did it start?


I think if you go back far enough you can find a time where we can reasonably say was before...say...Eisenhower? I don't think anyone would argue that what the GOP has become today had anything to do with the GOP of the Eisenhower administration, as an example.


So where did it start?


I've always laid the groundwork for the rise of the Tea Party movement, the demonization of the Democrats, and that entire cesspool of right wing media around the Reagan years. That, to me, was when you first saw the ideological start of the idea that


1. Government is intrinsically evil and corrupt.
2. The left is godless, and hence invalid
3. Corporatism is itself good and moral
4. There is a culture war happening, not just a conflict


I think the eighties were the start of the entire corporate movement. Greed is good. Government just gets in the way - and not just passively so, but is actively evil and immoral. Cowboy individualism. Randian libertarianism on the rise. Any ideology that is not right wing conservative is by default communism. Trickle down economics as a matter of faith more than any kind of thought out policy. The beginnings of the rejection of science in favor of creationism, and the demand that this be taught in schools. Really the intensification of the culture tension into outright culture wars. The moral majority. Not much later we see Newt Gingrich and politicians making solemn vows to never, ever, ever raise taxes ever no matter what.


Full disclosure - I supported McCain. And he was WELL after this all started. I did not recognize it then - I thought his obviously pretend pro-life stance was just a political ploy. I thought Sarah Palin was a terrible mistake, but not really indicative of anything other then a terrible mistake. Now I look back and it's pretty obvious Palin was McCain trying to appeal to the whackadoodle fucking crazies that were starting to become a driving force on the right. I certainly did not, at that time, have any idea just how bad it would get. But I would not pretend now like looking back on it it was pretty damn clear that those things were not disconnected to where we are now - not at all.


So....what do other people think? How far back do you have to go before you can safely recognize that the rot that became todays GOP was not yet started?

I agree with all of that.  But where they are now can be traced back further to the rise of the right wing evangelicals.  The combination of the rise of the political religious right and Reagan's political positions was the perfect storm that formed the party into what we see today.

[The Minsky Moment]

1. Government is intrinsically evil and corrupt.
2. The left is godless, and hence invalid
3. Corporatism is itself good and moral
4. There is a culture war happening, not just a conflict

The Birchers believed that, and Goldwater pandered to it, so the roots are definitely pre-Reagan. 
That apocalyptic style of politics is very old - you can see it in Bryan era populism or the 1820s anti-masonic party.  You can trace it back to the old court-country divisions of the ECW era.

What contained that mentality in the postwar era was a commitment at the leadership level to consensus politics over strife.  Party relations at the congressional level were reasonably cordial and Reagan's people had no problem dealing with the O'Neills and Rostenkowskis in a way it would hard to imagine now. 

The key turning point you are looking for is 1994 and Gingrich. 

[alfred russel]

The Birchers believed that, and Goldwater pandered to it, so the roots are definitely pre-Reagan. 
That apocalyptic style of politics is very old - you can see it in Bryan era populism or the 1820s anti-masonic party.  You can trace it back to the old court-country divisions of the ECW era.

What contained that mentality in the postwar era was a commitment at the leadership level to consensus politics over strife.  Party relations at the congressional level were reasonably cordial and Reagan's people had no problem dealing with the O'Neills and Rostenkowskis in a way it would hard to imagine now. 

The key turning point you are looking for is 1994 and Gingrich.

You beat me to this. There was some profoundly stupid stuff going on at all points in the country's history. It isn't too hard to trace a lot of the Know Nothings into the Republican Party--I seem to recall some epically stupid conspiracies going on in the 1850s (I was trying to think of some instance that seemed particularly stupid that is escaping my memory)...you go deeper into the politics of the 19th century and you get into absurd conspiracies regarding masons, catholics, and the pope. Really dumb religious movements, congressmen elected based on the number of bears they shot, or campaigning for congress by wrestling people on the stump.

[Malthus]

What I'm hearing is that it is not the stupidity of the populism that is new, it is the inability of those mobilizing that stupidity for their own advantage to cooperate with the other party on anything. In the modern era, that seems new.

[Berkut]

Stupid shit is not new, that doesn't mean all stupid shit traces back to the same things.

[Sheilbh]

What I'm hearing is that it is not the stupidity of the populism that is new, it is the inability of those mobilizing that stupidity for their own advantage to cooperate with the other party on anything. In the modern era, that seems new.

There's nothing necessarily stupid about populism - it's not a good or a bad thing. This type might be stupid - but it did win so maybe not.

[chipwich]

Mammon has been the enemy of mankind for thousands of years.

[Malthus]

What I'm hearing is that it is not the stupidity of the populism that is new, it is the inability of those mobilizing that stupidity for their own advantage to cooperate with the other party on anything. In the modern era, that seems new.

There's nothing necessarily stupid about populism - it's not a good or a bad thing. This type might be stupid - but it did win so maybe not.

The stupidity of the populism is orthogonal to whether it wins elections or not.

Saying wackadoodle nonsense may well prove a effective election strategy. The problem is that if people actually act on the wackadoodle nonsense, the outcome for the nation is bad, because reality will not be mocked.

Example: loudly trumpeting anti-science is, clearly, a winning election strategy for some. However, failing to act on the basis of science becomes a serious problem during a worldwide pandemic.

This seems to be a major problem for the GOP, particularly manifest under Trump.

[Malthus]

Stupid shit is not new, that doesn't mean all stupid shit traces back to the same things.

Yes, but from what I've read in this thread so far, the biggest change (when the GOP really ran over the cliff, so to speak) appears to be their relatively recent inability to get anything done cooperatively.

[Admiral Yi]

There's nothing necessarily stupid about populism - it's not a good or a bad thing. This type might be stupid - but it did win so maybe not.

This may be a bit of a semantic rabbit hole, but I'm curious which populist parties or movements or governments you would consider not stupid.

[Sheilbh]

This may be a bit of a semantic rabbit hole, but I'm curious which populist parties or movements or governments you would consider not stupid.

Modern ones - Blair, Koizumi, Lula, the Kirchners - I still have a soft spot for Podemos and Syriza. I mean I don't think Bibi or Modi or Erogan or Orban etc are stupid or running stupid governments

More historically - I love (some of) the Aussie and American populist traditions. In Australia from what I can tell basically all politics is populist at all times But almost all of their Labour leaders Gough Whitlam, John Curtin, early Paul Keating with the whole sort "fair go" Aussie ideology. Similarly I've always had a soft-spot for the sort of Mid-Western populists - the La Follettes, Farmer-Labor, Hubert Humphrey in 1948. I think Teddy Roosevelt and the progressives were populists with great achievements - though a different politics than, say Bryan. Obviously Cardenas

Edit: God! How could I forget: de Gaulle

The stupidity of the populism is orthogonal to whether it wins elections or not.

Saying wackadoodle nonsense may well prove a effective election strategy. The problem is that if people actually act on the wackadoodle nonsense, the outcome for the nation is bad, because reality will not be mocked.

I don't think it's orthogonal because one of the purposes of a political movement is to win power. In terms of fulfilling that goal it may be canny and I don't think you can win with stupidity, I think voters are pretty smart - so you, at least, need a lot of other stuff going on/as part of your offer.

And as I've said before with Trump the really striking thing is he didn't act on what he said - because he's lazy and not engaged or interested in governing. You know the whole infrastructure week meme is a sign of how unseriously he took those campaign commitments - instead what he delivered was what elite Republicans have wanted and delivered for decades: tax cuts and judges.

I don't think Trump's flaws are his populism, I think it's all of the personality/character stuff that was clear on day one.

[The Minsky Moment]

I have a soft spot for Syriza as well but its an exception that would tend to prove Yi's rule, as they ended up governing in a way that disappointed their populist backers.