Many people would like to believe if Donald Trump could magically be made irrelevant, the Republican Party would become…. ‘normal’ again, and not the party of American-style fascism it is today.
David Corn writing at Mother Jones has bad news for those people. As the title says: It Didn't Start With Trump. He begins with this:
In May, during an Aspen Institute conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the audience, “I want the Republican Party to take back the party, take it back to where you were when you cared about a woman’s right to choose, you cared about the environment…This country needs a strong Republican Party. And we do. Not a cult. But a strong Republican Party.” Her comments echoed a sentiment that Joe Biden had expressed during the 2020 campaign: If Donald Trump were out of the White House, the GOP would return to normal and be amenable to forging deals and legislative compromises.
Both Pelosi and Biden have bolstered the notion that the current GOP, with its cultlike embrace of Trump and his Big Lie, and its acceptance of the fringiest players, is a break from the past…
emphasis added
To be fair to Pelosi and Biden, it’s still not possible to say otherwise without getting huge amounts of pushback, not just from the Right, but from many of the so-called Very Serious People who see it as divisive — although that was back in May. The rise of Dark Brandon is signaling that Democrats are ready to push back. (Bret Stephens is a perfect example of denial; Jamelle Bouie is with Dark Brandon on this — see here and here.)
To continue with David Corn:
...But was the GOP’s complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern. Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections. Trump assembling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, QAnoners, and others who formed a violent terrorist mob on January 6 is only the most flagrant manifestation of the tried-and-true GOP tactic to court kooks and bigots. It’s an ugly and shameful history that has led the Party of Lincoln, founded in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery, to the Party of Trump, which capitalizes on racism and assaults democracy.
emphasis added
There’s no pay wall blocking the article — read the whole thing. (And consider sending some support to Mother Jones if you want to support good journalism.)
Corn looks at specific examples of how the Republican Party has turned to the Dark Side over the decades. Here are the headers:
- The General and the Scoundrel (Eisenhower and Joe McCarthy)
- The Senator and the Birchers (Goldwater, William F. Buckley, and The John Birch Society.)
- The Southern Strategy (Richard M. Nixon)
- Reagan’s Allies of Hate (Southern segregationists and the Religious Right)
- Satan’s Useful Idiot (George H.W. Bush and Pat Robertson)
- Joining the Tea Party (Because there was a Black Man in the White House)
If George W. Bush doesn’t get a mention, it’s not because he wasn’t riding this wave.
Corn closes with this judgement:
The GOP hasn’t been all extremism, all the time. Goldwater, late in his career, railed against the religious right and supported reproductive rights. As president, Nixon challenged assorted Cold War assumptions and created the Environmental Protection Agency. George W. Bush warned against anti-Muslim bigotry following 9/11. But since at least the 1950s, the party has consistently boosted extremism, prejudice, paranoia, and rage. Sometimes this has led to the GOP prevailing in political battles. In other instances, voters have beaten back this cynical gambit.
This dark side of the Republican Party has often been obfuscated, allowing Biden, Pelosi, and others to suggest there was once a day when the GOP was an honorable entity. Yet the history is undeniable: The party has consistently sought to exploit the worst of America and foment hate and suspicion. Trump didn’t invent this malevolence. He merely turned it into the party’s brand.
emphasis added
The history is there: don’t be fooled again, as the song goes. With every iteration, Republicans go farther down the slippery slope. The party can’t be saved at this point; they have chosen this path every time they had a chance to do differently. We ignore it at our peril. At least there are a few signs that’s starting to change.
Clik here to view.
UPDATE: Several commenters have noted that David Corn skipped over a few notable examples of GOP infamy. Keep in mind that this article was adapted from an upcoming book and Corn was picking and choosing some of the more straightforward examples in abbreviated form. This bit from the link about the book suggests it gives a fuller picture:
The gripping tale in AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS covers the last seven decades. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to segregationists to the New Right to the religious right to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to the militia movement to Fox News to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the Republican Party has deliberately nurtured and exploited rightwing fear and loathing fueled by paranoia, grievance, and tribalism. This powerful and important account explains how one political party has harnessed the worst elements in politics to poison the nation’s discourse and threaten American democracy.
BONUS READING— For a look at how the Republican Party has always been a for-profit con game as well, read Rick Perlstein’s The Long Con at The Baffler.
Clik here to view.
Let me close with a couple of plugs:
Adapted from David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, which will be published by Twelve in September.
FACT:
Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.
Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.