I lived through the Reagan administration. He was the last president I didn’t vote for, which is to say, I was 17 during his second election-- I missed voting against him by two months.
I said in an earlier thread that it is wrong to refer, still, to the Republicans as the GOP; they are a new party now, in name only the party nicknamed “this gallant old party” (later “Grand”) in 1875 for its defense of the Union.
I originally said the Republicans lost the right to be the GOP with the election of Trump, but maybe it was the election of Reagan that knocked them off that pedestal, the Bushes and their old guard family notwithstanding.
It depends on how you ask the questions. If you asked me, for example, if I am watching Trump’s press conferences and briefings compared to how much I have in the past with options A LOT LESS LESS THE SAME MORE A LOT MORE, I’d circle A LOT MORE, and if you even asked me something like “Do I think Trump should do more of what he is doing now, or do something completely different,” I’d have to say “more of what he is doing now,” because he is trying to procure more hospital equipment, and he said he will sign the stimulus bill when it hits his desk-- basically, since he stopped claiming the virus was a hoax, he has done useful things. They just have been a day late, a dollar short, and basically the car wash and bake sale of this crisis, as though he is some little guy just trying to help out, not THE ONE WHO SHOULD BE IN FUCKING CHARGE, and doing so much more, I could write a dissertation. But aside from prematurely announcing treatments, and sending dumbfucks off to buy fish medicine (which really, is not TOTALLY his fault), he’s not doing a lot actually wrong.
OK, calling it the “Chinese Virus” is very wrong, but I expected this guy to be telling people to take lots of zinc and vitamin C, and hang garlic on their doors. I wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d called people staying home from work “lazy,” and said everybody ought to be able to find something to do for the economy. I wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d referred to people dead from the virus as “the weak ones.” I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d tried to declare the shut-down necessary beyond the second week of November, and therefore, he automatically gets a second term. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d suggested bombing Italy & Wuhan.
So yeah, I can see people writing questions in such a way that my answers could be construed as “approval.”
Although the party has skewed hard right under the tutelage of Newt Gingrich (who gave them the ironical dictionary of “Compassionate Conservatism”) , the origins of neoconservatism have its roots going back to Goldwater, the GOP “Southern Strategy”, and the conversion of Dixiecrats into Republican hardliners. Although it seems to be largely forgotten now the Reagan era was rife with corruption and malfeasance, and while Reagan was a better speaker than Trump is by leagues, he appealed in many of the same ways, warning about the dangers of government and the need to clearcut bureaucracies and remove regulation to improve the business environment. Trump is actually the logical conclusion of everything the GOP has been mouthing for the last thirty years. That he is incompetent, amoral, corrupt, and totally lacking in empathy is not an accident or oversight; it is the ideal Republican leader.
I can’t say too much good about the Democratic party, either, and in Hillary Clinton they expressed their own ideals (capitulate to financial interests, make a lot of talk about social welfare while doing the minimum or less) but at least they aren’t dedicated to deliberately exploiting the most vulnerable in the population.
It was the Republican congress elected in 1946 that repealed the Wagner labor act and replaced it with the Taft-Hartley act that led eventually to the destruction of the labor unions which led eventually to the current situation. Since it was passed over Truman’s veto, I assume a lot of Dixiecrats must also have been responsible, but they were all DINOs, a heritage going all the way back to the civil war era when the Republicans opposed and the Democrats supported slavery.
All the Republicans need to do is blame somebody else for the problems they’re causing. After that, the problems themselves don’t matter to them. So if two million Americans die, it’s not a problem - as long as they can deflect the blame.