# Republicans today are a danger to the US and the world **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 18, 2018, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848 "2018-08-18T21:42:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/161 "2018-08-28T15:56:25Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Maybe someday the Republican Party can be rebuilt into something responsible, but the only way to get to that point is to destroy the current party completely. We’d be better off destroying it and waiting for the “Third Way” and “Progressive” wings of the Democratic Party to split (as they inevitably would in the absence of effective outside opposition) into separate parties. Once things settled down, the political debate would realign between two sane alternatives, and the view from the Overton Window would no longer feature an open sewer. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/162 "2018-08-28T17:51:03Z")
How do you destroy the Republican party, imprison it’s members? ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/163 "2018-08-28T18:06:24Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > How do you destroy the Republican party, imprison it’s members? Imprison its leaders would be a good start. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/164 "2018-08-28T18:09:37Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Because it isn’t the 16th century any more? In a world with nuclear and biological weapons, dick-sizing contests are the _last_ things we need. Especially when our stand-in is Trump, and we’d lose the contest. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/165 "2018-08-28T18:34:39Z")
I fully concur with the OP. The lessons of history are plain. How did the US, for instance, enter the era of anti-communist hysteria that resulted in McCarthyism, blacklisting, and the suspension of basic freedoms? How did a respectable and civilized nation like Germany come to embrace Hitler and Nazism? The answer is always the same: incrementally, one sinister step at a time, the gradual normalization of the abnormal, of extremism, fear and hate, the obfuscation of factual reality in favor of blind hysteria. This is what the gradual slide of Republicans into the abyss of lunacy during at least the past several decades has been about. Trump’s America today is not just another big precipitous increment toward madness, it’s a clear sign of its arrival. This is now an era where facts no longer matter, where legitimate media reporting facts are branded as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”, where the measured language of diplomacy is replaced by the puerile and goading language of the schoolyard, where honesty and integrity are liabilities and mendacity and corruption are virtues, where intelligence is ridiculed and ignorance celebrated. The groundwork is laid, but the consequences are just beginning. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/166 "2018-08-28T21:19:21Z")
[https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20561533&postcount=35402](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20561533&postcount=35402) > [@Stupid Republican idea of the day](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35409): > > The Republican party is not serving the public; they’re serving their voters and their donors. Everyone else is vermin. > > There is a lesson in the demise of Senators Flake, Corker, and perhaps Heller and McConnell. If people think that voting for an extremist authoritarian party is going to work in the short term and that they can be challenged when they go too far, think again. It’s not enough to support the extremists 90% of the time (Flake). It’s not enough to support them during the campaign when few other colleagues did (Corker). It’s not enough to go to unprecedented lengths to ensure his lone legislative success (McConnell). They have learned the hard way that they are dealing with people who fight for the sake of fighting. There is no diplomacy with these people. No reasoning with them. Authoritarians don’t really care what your credentials are. You are never free to voice your own thoughts, voice your own opposition. If someone opposes them, then they are treated like vermin just as their liberal opposition are. They become enemies of the state all the same. This is true for officeholders and this is true for voters as well. > > Right now it’s the Republican party that is being held hostage, but it could one day be an entire country. Right now the crime for disobedience is losing a political office. In the future, it could be jail or worse. The Nazification of the Republican party is real, and if this isn’t stopped, it’ll be the Nazification of an entire country. Looks like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is about to be the latest to find out the hard way. As I mentioned almost a year ago when Jeff Flake and Bob Corker announced their resignations, it doesn’t matter what Republicans ideologically subscribe to. It doesn’t matter if they have supported Trump during the election and whether they voted for the conservative agenda 85-95% of the time. Here we are nearly a year after this exchange about the noisy resignation about Jeff Flake. Much was made of his floor speech, but in the end, it was just noise. It was noise because American conservatives, just like German Weimar-era conservatives, suffered from the misguided belief that they could use wild wolves as useful attack dogs, only to be viciously mauled by them in the end. There is no going back. We are witnessing the Nazification of a major American political party, and it just happens to have a hell of a lot of power right now. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/167 "2018-08-28T21:37:14Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > … American conservatives, just like German Weimar-era conservatives, suffered from the misguided belief that they could use wild wolves as useful attack dogs, only to be viciously mauled by them in the end. There is no going back. We are witnessing the Nazification of a major American political party, and it just happens to have a hell of a lot of power right now. While I fully agree with you, I must respectfully note that I personally – or dogonally, if that’s a word – find the analogies between Nazis and nice wolves and doggies rather offensive. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/168 "2018-08-29T19:14:33Z")
> [@abhka](#): > > I’m not a Russian. > What’s wrong with what I wrote, please elaborate. What do you think of Vladimir Putin? Do you agree that he’s a murderous tyrant, who happily killed thousands of Russians to attain power? Conservative source: [Vladimir Putin & 1999 Russian Apartment-House Bombings -- Was Putin Responsible? | National Review](https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible/) Centrist documentation of his extensive corruption: [Five corrupt moves that helped make Putin the most powerful man in Russia - The World from PRX](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-01-13/five-corrupt-moves-helped-make-putin-most-powerful-man-russia) Center left source: [Finally, We Know About the Moscow Bombings | Amy Knight | The New York Review of Books](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/11/22/finally-we-know-about-moscow-bombings/) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848/169 "2018-09-02T18:02:06Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Well… I can’t disagree with that. So when is 2020 coming? [Not soon enough](https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?iso=20210120T12&p0=263&msg=No+more+Trump&font=cursive). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-today-are-a-danger-to-the-us-and-the-world/819848.md?page=8)