President.

That was when the Republicans lost power for the first time since the election of Ronald Reagan. Their sense of entitlement was astounding. Bob Dole went out the day after the election and said "we have no desire to work with this president." He also said that he spoke for the 57% of Americans who voted against him. That was the beginning of the lie that Perot cost Bush the election. It was also very similar to Mitch McConnell saying that his goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

The behavior of the Republicans in Bill Clinton's first two years was reprehensible. And they were rewarded for it by taking back the Congress in 1994. Then their behavior got worse over the next six years. And they were again rewarded in 2000 when George W Bush became president. They have consistently seen their immoral conduct produce favorable results.

They may not (probably won't) get their Trump puppet into the WH, but they may cling on to the Senate and hold the House (courtesy of the Koch Bros.) so that they can at least obstruct and frustrate Hillary Clinton. If they hold on to the House and Senate, I predict they'll claim a mandate to help pick the next SCOTUS Justice and make pretty much anybody she nominates (if Garland is not already confirmed) unacceptable to confirm. Which is why it is imperative that we at least capture the Senate.

and the government shutdown and the bullshit impeachment of Bill

That's when I started to fee real hatred for the Repukes. They started it.

Yeah, I thought Reagan was a deceptive idiot and Meese and Watt were the worst cabinet members ever, but I didn't start hating the Repukes until Newt.

Since then, my contempt has only grown.

They are all useless liars and hypocrites and thieves

Remember his fantastic vocabulary list that taught how to twist reality?

I have a feeling of unreality, actually.

It's as though we're watching some sort of movie, or a play, that isn't quite real.

But it is.

I keep wondering when I'm going to wake up!

brainwashed, know that government works.

The Republicans have only got worse after each election.

through which we discovered that Richard Nixon was, indeed, a crook. After he resigned under threat of impeachment, it seemed like the whole thing was an awful one-off, the likes of which would never happen again. That's what I thought, anyhow. Silly me.

have been made by the dog whistles against minorities and women.

i think Mccain and Romney were decent enough not to do this. i know McCain picked palin but he himself criticized the "he's an arab" woman. and he didn't go after obama on gay marriage. of course they lost and many in the party do not like that because they are not bigoted enough.

also important to remember that much of the reason democrats have been doing better is because of change in demographics in the country.

Will we have the energy to turn out in masse and clobber them? I think so. Time to stand up and be counted once and for all, and for the sake of all time forward.

Rise of the "vast right wing conspiracy" coming together to bring down Bill Clinton.

Our Congress allowing Bush/Cheney to steal an election in plain sight (recent post on the subject).

The American people watching as the Bush/Cheney administration tortured and openly violated the Geneva Conventions that so many fought and died for -- and an immoral Congress that refused to impeach them for their crimes.

Obama's response to the crisis: Issuing a blanket pardon to the torturers and parties to torture in our government. "Banning" torture (and if he believes it's in a president's power to "ban" that which is already a crime, doesn't that mean it's within their power to "unban" it?)

....

And so it goes.

We've had soooo many opportunities to halt the descent and redeem our national soul. Congress could have done it's duty and tossed out the Florida electors in 2000; tossed out the unlawfully appointed Ohio electors in 2004. They could have impeached Bush/Cheney for torture and thus declared that the United States is in fact the "good" country we claim to be. Obama could have held those responsible for the crimes accountable....

So many missed opportunities. And with each failure, down, and down we go.

Horrors in the middle east. The horror of Trump. Unconscionable levels of inequality and poverty. Mainstream acceptance of the very worst impulses.

There is always hope of redemption, but the farther we have fallen, the more difficult the fight to sanity becomes.

Somehow we need to keep despair at bay and keep the faith that we can accomplish things that seem impossible now.

I was new in college, a kid sportswriter on the school paper. Republicans won huge in the midterm. A young conservative professor from a nearby department waltzed into the journalism office and started chirping. Instead of a quick visit he sat down and pretended to be working on a paper for his class.

From the nearby sports office I heard enough of it to walk out there and talk to him. Now, this guy absolutely relished it. You should have seen the giddy look on his face. He assumed he could walk right over the liberal kid. I give him credit for two things: He did predict a Reagan rout in 1980, and overall he knew more about politics than I did at that stage. However, I was very well aware of some aspects that he had no clue about, like situational influence. That has always been my curiosity and specialty.

Instead of deflecting elsewhere he somehow pretended he could converse on those situational topics, and even prevail. Not close. He was so pathetic I essentially started laughing at him. My friends from the sports staff saw what as going on and walked out there with grins on their faces. I already had a reputation as someone who could pounce when sensing vulnerability.

Anyway, this professor was so flustered he defaulted to the meanest, most vile and hateful topics I've ever heard on a college campus. It was truly astonishing. My friends and I looked at each other in disbelief as he stormed out of the office. Later I called my dad, a psychology/sociology professor who taught political science earlier in his career. He said he wasn't shocked, that he had experienced the same thing when conservatives are pushed beyond their simplistic comfort zone of a few words each on taxes, government and national security.

It took 15 more years, but when Rush Limbaugh became nationally prominent I instantly recognized it as the same themes and tone as that 1978 college professor. Not the same guy but it might as well have been. Somewhere along that time frame I first told my dad, "Never prevent a Republican from sounding like a Republican." It was obvious they could do more damage to their own cause than millions of dollars opposition propaganda could manage.

Unfortunately the GOP still owns that terrain edge of 32% of Americans self identifying as conservative to only 21% as liberal. That protects the hatred and bigotry and exclusion from rightful impact. But it's hardly a coincidence that as more versions of quick and instant expression became available and popular -- like internet and smart phones and social media -- Republicans can't help reveal themselves and therefore lose popularity, benefit of a doubt and elections. The birther movement seemed impossibly stupid until I started reading dozens and dozens of tweets that not only supported it but wanted to take everything much further. Trump gave those Simplistic Angry Males a vehicle. I'm convinced he still doesn't believe they aren't majority thought.

It would never be this easy if we were waiting for a weekly McLoughlin Group, and not much else.

Passage of the initiative presaged a "taxpayer revolt" throughout the country that is sometimes thought to have contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency during 1980.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)

I think this was the real start of the popular conservative movement.

of Atwarter-Nixon to start invalidating civil and voting rights laws, continuing thru today 2016, was the start for me. My first election.

I'm afraid that in four years we'll get a more clever version of Trump. I don't think we've seen the bottom yet.

And I have been thinking about their brain dead ramblings, and babbling for years.

You can't talk to them.

They believe whatever they heard on Fox and no on iz gonna tellem diffrent.

Dumbasses.

I have an interesting book called "Strange Rivals " that posits that 1979 was much more a year of change than the Millennium. It compares three conservative leaders (or figureheads) - Thatcher, Reagan, and the Ayatollah. We are the sorry outcrop.

It was Raygun Ronnie who got the media to be his lap dog. Hollywood took DC by storm and the last vestiges of TV journalism went out the window. The 80's set the table for all of what we're seeing unfold today.

...I was not at all surprised that Obama was cast as a kind of superhero, even in cartoons with him pulling open his shirt to reveal a big "O" as in the Superman logo. We were incredibly lucky that he came around when he did, because he not only got Democrats excited and fighting again, but really made it clear how far the mask had fallen off Republican faces, exposing the raw John Birch bigotry and agenda. I'm not sure swing voters would have seen it so clearly if not for Obama.

Republicans have finally taken their "with us or against us" attitude too far.

It used to be a source of greater party unity for them.

Democrats, on the other hand, were more likely to bicker among themselves on how to possibly solve problems. As Will Rogers said, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."

When Republican politicians are called traitors or RINOs for even reaching a compromise with Democrats, the "with us or against us" attitude has gone too far and fracturing can result.

and I know this sort of thing has happened before in our history. In fact, the xenophobia and attendant stupidity were even worse and always seem to crop up when one party or the other loses its way.

In addition, and contributing to the problem, is the tendency for the smaller Hamiltonian party to make deals with devils and self destruct when the devils take over. The RNC embraced the bigots in 1968 and got Nixon elected. They might have survived the bigots, but Reagan embraced the misogynist religious wackos as another certain voting bloc and that has destroyed them because, as Goldwater warned, the religious loonies are incapable of compromise with anyone, not even their own party.

Either the Republicans will find a way to eject that particular bunch knowing they will splinter off and the party will be out of power for some time or the big money kingmakers will abandon the party to the lunatics. The party will sputter on as a regional party but it will be doomed in either case.

This level of xenophobia has happened many times before, most notably resulting in the Nativist Riots in Philadelphia in the 1840s and the Know Nothings of the 1850s.

... courted by the GOP over the years who are pushing "no compromise" the most.

I also feel democrats have done a horrendous job at voting in and winning congressional elections. Until that happens we're not going to make much significant progress.

I'm delighted that Hillary looks strong to win the presidency. But until we take back the house and senate, I believe her presidency will meet with as much resistance as President Obama's presidency.

I'm disappointed primarily lately in self-described progressives who buy into the false equivalency that there's 'not much difference' between Hillary and Donald. And in the really moronic ones who don't vote in midterm elections, where we democrats got our asses handed to us.

It's a lot better than it was when we had W. as president. I just feel it can be so much better if the way people vote in federal elections, they all voted in congressional, local and state elections. That's what I'd like to see as a very high priority for the democratic party going forward.

Too much ignorance, too much gullible acceptance of propaganda. Wherever people get their information - if you can call it that - they don't check facts, don't bother with corroborating. There's no logic applied.

Too many people really do believe everything they read on the internet.

The media's insistence on a false equivalence. And all media outlets do it, too. It's not like it's only Fox that's skewing things.

They have to support the Democractic President and not try to appeal to the deplorables. All that does is turn off your base support, and the deplorables still don't vote for you (i.e. Blanch Lincoln and others).

And stop acting like everything has to be bi-partisan. When the democrats had a supermajority or when they were one shy of one, they acted like everything had to bi-partisan.

Too many safe Congressional seats (nearly all of them). We need redistricting that is simply based on numbers. No districts based on this or that ethnic group or political party.

...I would say that many of us thought we would get to this point, but...given the fact that Bush and Cheney got away with 100% of everything...we probably thought of it as a "someday" scenario rather than 2016, a distant but inevitable possibility.

The root of the insanity found in 2016 is the fact that a reality show star, a failed real estate / casino "mogul" who somehow painted an image of himself as being the grand poobah tycoon among all tycoons, beat the other 15 people in the Republican Primary Clown Car. He beat 15 Republican politicians.

That should have been the first clue that the gangrene had set into the GOP.

in 1933 that Smedley Butler stopped. Look it up if you have never heard of it.

Since then there has been an extreme right wing acting mostly within the Republican Party that has bobbed to the surface from time to time. Republicans in the 50s had a 'liberal' wing that was ascendant under Eisenhower while its crazy conservative wing was somewhat abandoned.

The conservatives came roaring back with Barry Goldwater. But the coupe de grace was Dick Nixon and his southern strategy. Uniting the conservative forces pretty much under one banner laid the groundwork for a fairly reliable concentrated grouping of conservatives. This allowed Republicans to quit pretending to be 'liberals' and move further and further to the right.

There were tentative steps at first, I think, because they didn't want to break up their new found coalition. Reagan's candidacy really coalesced the groups with his nods to racism. The evangelicals were added mostly with this nod to racism. From there it seemed like the spiral down just sped up with one crazy after another pushing further and further right - Atwater, Gingrich, deLay.

One thing the right has always had is the backing of money which has no morality and is only looking to create more money.

That's about it for now - got to go. The roots are long. Nixon's southern strategy was the real catalyst for today IMHO

From 1980 to 2008 the GOP simply used the crazies to get votes. After 2008 the lunatics took over the asylum.

I honestly don't know what will fix it when one side is so blindingly oblivious to truth and facts.

I listen to conservatives all the time and, honestly, they are completely divorced from reality. I'm not kidding. They believe things that are simply false. And there is no correcting that.

Up until the 1950's, it was more or less acceptable to lynch minorities in this country - gather up a mob, break into the jail, pull them out and hang them, set them on fire in the street. People took pictures and posed with the corpse. With impunity.

Trumpism is not a new phenomenon. It is the white supremacist underbelly of America.

Nixon's "southern strategy" worked for them for decades, but it was doomed to fail eventually without a serious overhaul
their 2012 post-mortem document was on target, but turned out to be much too little much too late
now the racists and xenophobes compose a plurality, or at least a significant subset, of the Republican party, and you can't just undo that overnight
it will take decades for them to backfill the electoral hole they're in now. i hope, in that time, we can begin to undo some of the damage caused by W and his congressional cronies.