Dear Kossacks:
The recent comment by our fellow Kossack new10 (in quotes and augmented by my own comments in parentheses) is worth repeating:
"Why/how the GOP has come to this (the precipice of the destruction of itself and our representative democracy), is not mysterious, nor is it due to Trump. The now fully metastasized cancer that is the Republican base had it’s beginnings, of course, in Nixon’s southern strategy (actually, it had its beginnings further back, in 1964. That year, the right wing of the party took over the Republican National Convention, rejected moderate New York Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller's bid for President and instead nominated arch conservative Senator Barry Goldwater (R-ARIZONA). Goldwater had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in his run for President actively courted support of racist Southern Democrat politicians (so-called Dixiecrats) such as the late Senator Strom Thurmond (D-South Carolina).
Although Goldwater lost the general election, He won the popular vote in 6 states of the former Confederacy, proving that the GOP could rise again in the South by appealing to the bigotry of the Dixiecrats. Goldwater set the stage for Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in 1968. After Goldwater's defeat in 1964, the business class patricians in the GOP who wanted to retain control of the party and wrench control of Congress from the New Deal/Kennedy/Johnson Democratic coalition, had a dilemma:
"finding a solution to the puzzle of delivering greed based rule to the wealthy within the context of a democratic election system. In other words, how to get a large enough segment of the working class to vote against their own economic interests, and for those of the wealthy."
"The solution chosen by Republican leadership has been to fan the flames of racism and (sexism, homophobia, and religious bigotry) at election time, followed by tepid action on fulfilling that base’s hate priorities after the elections. Repeated cycles of this process worked to radicalize the GOP base so that it’s now a verotable (sic) Frankestein's monster, threatening it’s creator as well as the rest of us. So, the GOP is attempting to keep their monster from turning on them by, in terror, appearing to support it’s (its) destructive desires. There are no ‘conservative values’ being sacrificed. Such values have long been co-opted by the rich and powerful to serve only as a ruse. To distract from the single true motivating principle of GOP leadership and elites. Greed."
"Conservative intellectuals, such as (conservative columnist) Ms. Rubin, express shock and dismay at the state of the right. Which they wrongly see as having been transformed by Trump. The truth is, however, that Trump merely saw clearly the GOP’s decades old greed based strategy and hate based tactics and elevated (in fact, MAGNIFIED) them bigly."
"Authoritariansim is now on the doorstep of the United States, courtesy of the GOP and of the right in general. The failure of conservative intellectuals and moderates from early on to squarely confront the GOP’s underlying corrupt strategy of establishing greed based rule by the wealthy via the stoking of hatred among white working class voters damns them all. There is an healthy role for sane conservatism, but that’s not what we have now."
I could not have said it better. Let's take this comment viral.