# So when exactly did the Republican party start becoming "insane"? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2015, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747 "2015-12-07T22:36:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**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:** [December 8, 2015, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/61 "2015-12-08T14:39:22Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > What you are seeing is an increasing polarization of the electorate. The Republicans are moving to the right, and the Democrats are moving to the left. Yeah, some truth to that for sure. But… > [@](#): > > Your main presidential candidate says that businesses don’t create jobs. > > Your second main candidate is a declared socialist. > > Left wing kids on campuses have gone bat-shit crazy. > > Black Lives Matter - and no others. 1. That was obviously a misstatement. 2. “Socialist” in the “Democratic Socialist” sense. 3. Well, when haven’t they been? 4. BLM may have some problems, but that’s not a fair assessment. > [@](#): > > Identity politics rules the day. > > The Democrats seem to now believe that you can always fix an economy by borrowing and spending more money, and that you can heavily tax and eventually ban the key ingredient of industry without hurting the economy, because of ‘green jobs’. > > Democrats seem increasingly contemptuous of the rule of law and the constitution. They have lost in court on gun control repeatedly, but keep coming back to it. Speech codes on campus, lack of due process for the accused in rape trials, an imperial president pushing the boundaries of executive power, an Attorney General hinting that she might try to prosecute speech that ‘goes over the line’, some Democrats suggesting that climate ‘deniers’ should somehow be silenced or punished, etc. There’s a depressingly authoritarian aspect to the left that seems to be getting worse. Identity politics is a winning strategy, and I think the Republicans are learning about that. > [@](#): > > Democrats think the problem with America is that it’s not regulated enough. > > They think Capitalism is a dead political system ripe for ‘replacement’. 1. Maybe think it’s been deregulated too much, or in the wrong way. Not really the same thing. 2. I would not consider that to be mainstream Democratic thinking. > [@](#): > > I could go on. The left has gone left, and the right has gone right. Because you’re on the left, you don’t see your own shift and you tend to exaggerate the shift on the other side. > > As a reminder, it was only 8 years ago that Barack Obama was against gay marriage, and Clinton was still proud of the Defense of Marriage Act. Pot legalization was pretty much unthinkable a decade ago. Socialism was considered a failed political system, and capitalism had won the day. > > You guys are fond of saying that Ronald Reagan could not be elected as a Republican today. By the same token, Bill Clinton of 1994 - the guy who reformed welfare, who declared the era of big government to be over, and who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in today’s Democrat party. The blue dogs are all gone - Jim Webb is the most conservative Democrat I can think of, and he’s gone. Joe Lieberman was drummed out of the party. > > Difficult times cause polarization. That’s what we’re seeing now. From my perspective, Bernie Sanders is every bit as crazy as Donald Trump or Ben Carson, and the Democrats following him are in denial that he’s electable, just as Trump’s followers are. He’s a crazy 77 year old man with wild hair and a set of beliefs recycled from the ash heap of history. That he has as much support as he does means the same for the Democrats as Trump’s popularity means for the Republicans. > > The other factor driving all this craziness is that we have probably the worst political class in my lifestime. Washington (and Ottawa) is full of idiots, ideologues, and corruption, on the left and the right. The people are getting sick of it all and are looking for something different. Good point about Clinton. But this thread is about the Republicans. Should someone start a similar thread about the Democrats? ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/62 "2015-12-08T15:07:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > What you are seeing is an increasing polarization of the electorate. The Republicans are moving to the right, and the Democrats are moving to the left. > > Your main presidential candidate says that businesses don’t create jobs. > > Your second main candidate is a declared socialist. > > Left wing kids on campuses have gone bat-shit crazy. > > Black Lives Matter - and no others. :dubious: Sam, I’ve seen your analysis on Libertarian politics. How is it that someone so smart so completely fails to understand _any_ of these issues? Seriously, I’m rather stunned. This is the sort of list that you’d think ought to include “you didn’t build that”. > [@](#): > > The Democrats seem to now believe that you can always fix an economy by borrowing and spending more money, and that you can heavily tax and eventually ban the key ingredient of industry without hurting the economy, because of ‘green jobs’. _Nonsense_. Let’s have some citations, please. > [@](#): > > They think Capitalism is a dead political system ripe for ‘replacement’. Oh for _fuck’s_ sake. See, this is what I’m talking about. When people here on the left bring up ridiculous right-wing talking points, they’re taking them directly from the agendas and speeches of major political players. From the planks of the republican platforms. From the bloviations of Limbaugh or the biography of Carson. _ **Which figures on the other side of the aisle are you getting this from** _? Who is saying that capitalism is dead, or needs to be replaced? Please, let’s have a source! Is it Obama? Hillary? Sanders? Kerry? Maddow? Moore? Who in the world is saying such crazy things (and isn’t just doing it for the clickbait)? Let’s hear it, so we can remove them from positions of authority! They sound like real nuts! But that’s just it - they _aren’t_ in positions of authority, are they? They’re random HuffPo columnists, or university professors; people with no influence or power, saying these things within a very specific context or as an overblown reaction to injustice which they then go on to qualify. Fringe loons like this have no place in the upper echelons of the democratic party. They ARE the upper echelons of the republican party. > [@](#): > > From my perspective, Bernie Sanders is every bit as crazy as Donald Trump or Ben Carson. […] He’s a crazy 77 year old man with wild hair and a set of beliefs recycled from the ash heap of history. And this is just nonsensical. So wait, lemme get this straight - Nordic Democracy, the system that has made the Nordics (and to a lesser extent France and Germany) some of the best places in the world to live, is somehow “recycled from the ash heap of history”? No, I’m sorry, these ideas are not somehow “discarded”. They’re active, right now, and _they work_. Sanders isn’t recycling ideas from the garbage. He’s stealing ideas from places where we know they’ve worked! You want recycling from the garbage? Carson is a Young Earth Creationist! Meanwhile, does Sanders deny evolution? Does he deny global warming? Does he think that Obama is a Muslim? Does he think America should close its doors to all Muslim immigrants? Does he think that the pyramids were grain silos built by Joseph? Does he show a complete disregard for factual reality and fact-checking? These are the sort of things we bring up when we say that Carson and Trump are crazy. What comparable ideas does Sanders hold? Other than the idea that you can call yourself “Socialist” and still be politically electable, regardless of how good your platform is, but that’s more a reflection of how crazy America as a whole is than anything else. Now can we PLEASE stop saying “Democrats think X” without a source to back it up? Please? It’s getting ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/63 "2015-12-08T15:21:25Z")
[Quote=John Mace] Identity politics is a winning strategy, and I think the Republicans are learning about that. [/quote] I agree with most all of your takedown of **Sam Stone’s** surprisingly vacuous post. However, the Republicans mastered identity politics more than a half century ago. The Southern Strategy, the Moral Majority, anti-gay politics… They aren’t “learning,” they’ve been holding master classes on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/64 "2015-12-08T15:32:06Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > How would their social and welfare policies look if they fulfilled their defense obligations? With the National Front doing well in France do you think European nations will resist nationalistic tendencies if more terrors attacks succeed? They fulfill defence obligations just fine. That they don’t fulfill the quotas intended to serve the imperial ambitions of one member of NATO doesn’t negate that. They just make sane, rational choices to provide more teachers, healthcare, etc. I can’t even begin to fathom what you’re trying to conflate with the last sentence. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/65 "2015-12-08T16:24:40Z")
**Sam** , did somebody steal your laptop? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/66 "2015-12-08T16:49:26Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Democrats seem increasingly contemptuous of the rule of law and the constitution. They have lost in court on gun control repeatedly, but keep coming back to it. Speech codes on campus, lack of due process for the accused in rape trials, an imperial president pushing the boundaries of executive power, an Attorney General hinting that she might try to prosecute speech that ‘goes over the line’, some Democrats suggesting that climate ‘deniers’ should somehow be silenced or punished, etc. There’s a depressingly authoritarian aspect to the left that seems to be getting worse. As it is beginning to be more the case your political compass is so faulty that you fail to see what is going on. The case you are referring about a democrat suggesting that climate change deniers should be punished is itself a propaganda point of the right, in reality that democrat politician was going after the ones funding denial and wanted to ask the denier scientists about their funding, not to preventing them from talking. His approach though was quickly criticized and he pulled off. That is not what Lamar Smith and the Republicans in congress are doing, he did double and tripled down up to the point of directly accusing the scientists of malfeasance. That is indeed crazy behaviour after the evidence was presented ( **and confirmed elsewhere** ) regarding the latest studies that show that the so called pause in global warming was not there. And Republicans are not condemning that abuse of power from the congress critters. … > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > As a reminder, it was only 8 years ago that Barack Obama was against gay marriage, and Clinton was still proud of the Defense of Marriage Act. Pot legalization was pretty much unthinkable a decade ago. Socialism was considered a failed political system, and capitalism had won the day. > > You guys are fond of saying that Ronald Reagan could not be elected as a Republican today. By the same token, Bill Clinton of 1994 - the guy who reformed welfare, who declared the era of big government to be over, and who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in today’s Democrat party. The blue dogs are all gone - Jim Webb is the most conservative Democrat I can think of, and he’s gone. Joe Lieberman was drummed out of the party. This is silly in light of one noticing that Obama is actually a centrist and the health care system he came with was a Republican idea. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In fact, the history of the world is that it has been turning right throughout the 20th century. Socialism, state industrial planning, and big government in general all took a kick in the teeth in the 80’s and 90’s, primarily because of their massive failures in the post WWII era. Nonsense when you also noticed that indeed gay marriage and pot legalization are becoming mainstream. And worldwide developed nations see universal health care as mainstream. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I guess we’re wealthy enough and far enough removed from the history of the left’s dismal failures in the 20th century that we’re doomed to have another cycle of crazy before that wealth starts to vanish and the left starts running out of other people’s money. Again. As noticed, your political compass is broken, when 600 scientists advised NOAA to stand up to the craziness of the Republican party NOAA and the democrats listened, the Republicans are listening to the Lysenkoes of today, that is indeed madness. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/67 "2015-12-08T16:52:53Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > The mainstreaming of the internet led to those email forwards where you could send some bogus horseshit to a hundred people who tended to pass it along as if it were true. I’m sure there were left leaning ones but I don’t recall anybody sending me any. I did get a gazillion right leaning ones. Now Facebook has taken over that area. This I have always felt has a lot to do with it. When the internet was starting, I thought it would be THE force in preventing tyranny. No one could suppress information any longer. People couldn’t be kept in the dark, denied the truth. But instead it seems to have created the situation where people only hear data that confirms what they already believe. Instead of meeting new people and hearing new ideas, everyone seems to only care about hearing confirming information. Instead of becoming a society of open ideas and debate, we’ve become more Balkanized than the Balkans ever were. Instead of being forcibly kept in ignorance by the Government, people are willingly doing it to themselves. And they think it’s a good thing! ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/68 "2015-12-08T17:41:31Z")
[Quote=Sam Stone] They have lost in court on gun control repeatedly, but keep coming back to it. [/quote] This is a particularly bizarre criticism to launch today, when the headlines on many news sources include: “Supreme Court Leaves Assault Weapons Ban Intact” and “Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenge to Assault Weapons Ban in Chicago Suburb” Yeah, pretty stupid to go to the courts regarding gun control. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/69 "2015-12-08T17:42:33Z")
I think it’s the cumulative effect of talk radio and bubble world media where you can now have much better silos of information and confirming beliefs than used to be possible in the conservative world. I was talking to an older lady, and she mentioned in passing that obamacare was causing the hospital she worked at to lose money (totally possible with some of the changes). The implication of course was that we never should have altered a thing, and she even parroted the line about the US having the best healthcare system in the world. I point out that may be partially true for the people that have it, but we fail to cover tens of millions and our system is far more expensive than other nations like Canada. At this point she goes into the talking points about Canadians having massive wait times where they are forced to migrate to the US to get certain treatments. And not wanting to have to pay for people that can’t afford healthcare. I did not press the point further due to timing, but she heard that notion about Canadian healthcare from places like talk radio or fox news. Had she talked to Canadians who actually live under that system and asked if they would like to trade theirs for our US system that was supposedly the greatest in the world, she would have been repeatedly rebuffed. Even if there was some increased wait for specific procedures, the benefits gained in actual results and cost savings would dwarf any of our advantages. Does not matter, a bubble world allows bad ideas to go unchallenged, and the same goes for incredibly imperfect mediums like talk radio or television shows with hard commercial breaks and the hosts prerogative on who is invited on and what is covered. My clearest example of this is Avik Roy. Hearing him on talk radio vs his dialog with Ezra Klein while the latter was at the Washington Post was night and day. On talk radio he sounded like Healthare reforms that we implemented were the worst of all possible worlds (and god knows it’s got problems), but in his online video dialog he came across as MUCH more reasonable and nuanced and even supportive of exchanges. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/70 "2015-12-08T17:55:59Z")
BTW, I think you have an opposite effect in American universities with speech codes and the left ramping up on their authoritarian streak to silence critical ideas. This is not good. I never understood people wanting to shut off debates or silence ideas. If there is an idea that I disagreed with, I always wanted it out in the open and challenged in the most public and visible way, and shown to be in err or faulty in some respect. To that end, I NEVER wanted the ideas I disagreed with championed by fools, I wanted (and still want) them championed by the smartest people around so that the best possible foot forward could be placed. What is the point of winning a race against a cripple? Big deal, who cares if you can out argue Sean Hannity (he’s a moron), Krauthammer would be a much better target. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/71 "2015-12-08T18:25:08Z")
From afar the thing that really strikes me is the lack of proper journalism, I don’t mean just newspaper journalism but across news media. I’d imagine especially digital media. Journalists ask questions, they probe the position espoused by a party, a vested interest group of individual. That’s certainly the case in Europe. People and arguments have to be scrutinised or they have zero credibility. If you have a right-wing capitalist-owned news media that chooses not to ask probing questions but effectively allows commentators to parrot slogans, you’re going to end up with what you have now in the US. I’ve watched perfectly mainstream terrestrial news broadcasts open-mouthed at statements made by newsreaders as if they were facts. In comparison with other media it might seen reasonable but it’s stuff no one would even want to try and get on the air in the UK - yet unquestioned, accepted as fact. I don’t know what happened to responsible journalism but unless you read a broadsheet newspaper … I don’t know what you can do in the US. It’s like the sane people already lost. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/72 "2015-12-08T18:34:05Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > 1. That was obviously a misstatement. > > 2. “Socialist” in the “Democratic Socialist” sense. > > 3. Well, when haven’t they been? > > 4. BLM may have some problems, but that’s not a fair assessment. > > 5. Maybe think it’s been deregulated too much, or in the wrong way. Not really the same thing. > > 6. I would not consider that to be mainstream Democratic thinking. So, **John** – You _are_ a rational thinker after all! Welcome to the bright side. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > **Sam** , did somebody steal your laptop? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/73 "2015-12-08T18:51:11Z")
Getting back to the original question, I suspect the GOP started down the crazy trail in 1980, when Reagan started courting evangelicals, such as Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. The evangelical Christianization of conservative politics has subtly eroded a valuable political ideal that we inherited from the British: the Queen’s Loyal Opposition. That is, the notion that the party across the aisle is misguided and even moronic, but has the same essential aim as yours’; the health and betterment of the nation. Evangelicals, though, don’t argue with wrong-headed but good-hearted opponents; no, they battle Evil. There’s no compromise with Satan. So no accommodation of his nefarious minions on the left. That’s what I see in the Republican Party - parts of it, anyway - the sense that those who oppose them, or even just different from them, aren’t simply _wrong_ but in fact _depraved._ And since it’s easy to hate someone who hates _you_, this has spread to the other side, as well. I’m as guilty of demonizing rightists as Fox News is of liberals, often as not. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/74 "2015-12-08T19:15:36Z")
From an outsiders viewpoint, it seems to be a consequence of the strategy the Republicans chose to deal with their shrinking demographic base. Rather than reach out to a wider demographic, they appear to have gone for a strategy of increasing the turnout from their shrinking base. Get a greater and greater fraction of the aging white demographic out of the sofa and into the voting booth. That does not seem like a terrible idea on the face of it, but over-reliance appears to have painted themselves into a corner. Basically, to get more and more voters out, they have kept turning up the rhetoric until its pretty apocalyptic. And said rhetoric have, along with trying to refight the social battles of the bases youth, pushed away likely demographics and voters. They can’t climb down now, because the people who don’t factcheck and believe the stories about European healthcare are majority of the base they got left. Its a study in evolution and over specialization really. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/75 "2015-12-08T20:00:47Z")
Some influential evangelical, can’t remember who, might have been Falwell, once described what drew them to politics. It was Roe v. Wade. I think that had such an influence on religious types that they felt they could not sit out of politics any longer, and started afterwards to leverage their religious power into political ones. I don’t know how correct that is, so take it with a grain of salt. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/76 "2015-12-08T20:01:12Z")
Everyone took the good answers. I’ll blame the atomization of society. People want fellowship and an identity to cling to in a nihilistic culture. Religion, social politics, anything to give their lives meaning. Some of the angriest people are fairly well off. As long as they fight their lives have meaning. > [@octopus](#): > > The growth of China which is a dangerous strategic competitor and the demise of much of our manufacturing industrial base is the result of the US pricing itself out of low skilled labor in the global economy. That is one of the great flaws of modern liberal thought. You know you’re a real conservative when you support mercantilism. Just kidding. I think. Opinions like yours, which aren’t difficult to find, lay bare the simplistic left-right stereotypes about the right supporting free trade and capitalism and the left being protectionists…or socialists…or whatever it’s supposed to be. Sometimes the workers are stubborn and don’t fall in line with their masters’ opinions. Blue collar workers don’t give a fig what some dead guy named Ricardo thinks is best for them. > [@Grsz11](#): > > The US is a centrist country. The majority are just left or right of center. Isn’t that a tautology? Or did you have a comparison to other countries in mind? How does it even work, when the supposed center is always changing? Shades of the golden mean fallacy espoused by beltway journalists. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/77 "2015-12-08T20:05:29Z")
To answer the original question, I’ll add to the count of those who think it was the Reagan era. Saint Ron assured his disciples that they were the people who mattered, the people who wanted America stronger than its evil enemies, who went to church and obeyed authority, who didn’t use drugs or have homosexual intercourse. But the people on the margins didn’t go away. More and more people joined their quest for full and equal rights and the Disciples weren’t special nor in power any more. Mass insanity ensued. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/78 "2015-12-08T20:31:28Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Some influential evangelical, can’t remember who, might have been Falwell, once described what drew them to politics. It was Roe v. Wade. I think that had such an influence on religious types that they felt they could not sit out of politics any longer, and started afterwards to leverage their religious power into political ones. I don’t know how correct that is, so take it with a grain of salt. [Several grains of salt!](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133) > [@](#): > > One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it… > > But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism… > > Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and _Christianity Today_, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976. > > When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.” The Religious Right _has_ contributed to the Republican Radicalism. As previously noted, “The Loyal Opposition” became “Minions of Satan.” Not the only factor, though. Helps explain Ted Cruz, surely. But not The Donald… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/79 "2015-12-08T20:45:30Z")
The seeds were sown earlier, but the Republican Party didn’t start coming unhinged until Clinton was elected. That’s when the ridiculous conspiracy theories started moving into the mainstream (Vince Foster’s “murder”, for example) and the brinkmanship and witch hunts began – shutting down the government, investigations as endless fishing expeditions. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2015, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747/80 "2015-12-08T21:50:40Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > What defense obligations? Do you think without NATO, the next thing we’d see would be some foreign invader at the Rhein? Wait, hang on, I’m being informed that France has allies to its west. I mean, some foreign invader at the Oder? Wait, hang on, I’m being informed that Germany has allies to its west. I mean, some foreign invader at… > > …I could probably keep going for quite some time. A country completely surrounded by allies in an age of peace and globalized trade is supposed to keep a huge military force… Why, exactly? What unfulfilled defense obligations are we talking about here, exactly? The only people doing any sort of “invading” are ISIS, and their preferred method of attack is not well prevented by a standing army. It’s like wondering why Canada doesn’t have a huge military force. Who are they threatened by, the Mole People? Icelandic battle fleets? The USA? (Actually, given the state of politics in that last one, I’d start to feel very worried if I was Canadian or Mexican.) That was incoherent. Ukraine and Georgia (not the Southern state) would have liked to have NATO protection. I suppose current events don’t matter? And don’t you think being a parasite to American military protection is unbecoming a prosperous modern nation that has committed to a certain level of defense spending? I’m sure they’ll call on their obligations they can’t be bothered to pay for. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-exactly-did-the-republican-party-start-becoming-insane/739747.md?page=5)