Was the GOP always this bad?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The destruction of healthcare. Weakening of education. Denial of climate change. Illegitimate wars. Gerrymandering. Voter suppression. Useless weapons programs. Reproductive repression. Constituent avoidance. Incompetent, malevolent cabinets. Entrenched racism. Failed drug policies. Regressive taxation. Anti-feminism. Failures of church-state separation.

As a youngish person, they seem to have gotten even worse than the Bush Jr. era. Were they always this bad? What was it that they used to have going for them (since the post-slavery days) that gave them power and credibility?

I’ve lived in the USA for about 15 years now and didn’t pay much attention to politics before I moved here. In that time, it seems like the GOP has steadily gotten more and more, well, evil. Is is it a case of my selective attention? My peers and exposure to “the liberal agenda”?

Surely they must’ve been a somewhat sane, if conservative, party at some point. What happened?

2

Bankers used to be the epitome of steadfast, reliable, and dull. He worked from 9:00 to 5:00 (banker’s hours), Monday through Friday, wore a three-piece suit, parted his hair, played golf on Saturday, belonged to the Rotary Club. When your son outgrew his piggy bank, the banker would open an account for him to put his Christmas money in, and give him his very own passbook. When the banker wanted to be daring, he’d offer a free toaster for opening a new account. The banker was mundane, reliable, recognized, but unappreciated.

Now bankers are people of action. They urge you to refi to a variable rate (but you’ll make up the balloon payment on the backend), then they package those mortgages to a collateralized debt obligation backed by a credit default swap, while urging their Personal Banking Associates[sup]TM[/sup] to upsell Personal Banking Relationships[sup]TM[/sup] to their Valued Clients.

Republicans are like that, too.

3

They appealed to the worst elements in America in order to win elections; it worked, but the people they appealed to ate the old Republican party from the inside and now wear it like a flayed hide.

4

Exaggerate much? :rolleyes:

5

No, that’s all true.

6

Provide cites, then.

To take one example, his claim about “destroying healthcare”. The ACA doesn’t provide healthcare. Changing it doesn’t “destroy” anything. At this point, the replacement bill isn’t even likely to pass.

7

Hmm. And you think the others are exaggeration too?

8

Huh, fascinating. I guess racism as deliberate strategy isn’t new to them…

9

ObamaCare is the law of the land. As I recall ObamaCare was passed when the Democrats had the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Per the news this morning ObamaCare will remain in place and not be changed.

Please explain to me just how the Republicans caused the destruction of healthcare.

10

So, in other words, they’re just trying to destroy healthcare, but it doesn’t count because they’re too incompetent to succeed? OK, let’s go with that.

11

They had less libertarian ideologues back in the day, but with Reagan the ideologues got tingly all over

Yeah, well. The Democrats do most of that as well. They started the anti-drug craze back in the 1930s and an old loon such as Joe Biden, often admired here as a replacement president, still runs with it. The Dems also dearly love their wars, not as much as Hillary, but quite a lot — who do you think oversaw the popular Vietnam War ? And thus Wars need ‘Useless Weapons Programs’. And neither the Clinton nor Obama eras hiked up taxation for the rich that much.
And some of your makeweights wouldn’t be an issue in Europe: We don’t care a hang about Church-State Separation, we don’t even care about religion as strongly — let alone Voter Suppression; which is rather something for voters to take action on.

Climate Change Denial is self-correcting; whilst as for incompetence, Trump’s lot of buffoons seem no more and no less inept than the average cabinet, American or European.

Opponents are always going to accuse incumbents of malice and stupidity.

12

Reagan was the main force for taking reality out of American politics. He was the guy who discovered that if you looked people in the eye and told them something was true, it was irrelevant whether or not it actually was true. He was the politician who moved the divide from true and false to believable and not believable. Reality was no longer what was true; reality was what you believe.

13

The Democrats didn’t start anything back in the 1930s, because the Democrats didn’t exist in the 1930s. There was a party back then called the Democratic Party, but it was not the same party as the party which currently bears that name. Nor was the Republican party of 1930 the same as the current Republican party.

14

Failed, repeated attempts to dismantle healthcare points to intent. “The law of the land” is only one aspect of the ACA*. The reality surrounding both of these, is that uncertainty regarding this administration’s commitment to support the law is causing more insurance carriers to pull out, and that’s not helping to create a stable environment.

*A law will exist in name only, if you’re unwilling to enforce or fund it. The current POTUS has said he’d be fine with “letting the ACA self-destruct”, rather than make appropriate moves to fix it. That’s putting politics over people, and neglecting responsibility. You can debate whether or not that falls into a category of “destruction of healthcare”, but in the eyes of many, it’s close enough, if not directly on the path.

15

Those aren’t exaggerations.

Healthcare - the gop wants to privatize and reduce medicaid and medicare, strip consumer protections, cut subsidies for purchasing insurance and use the savings to give tax cuts to the rich.

Weakening of education - putting Betsy devos in charge. A poll showed the majority of Republicans think higher education is bad for American.

Denial of climate change - do you need me to comment on this?

Illigetimate wars - Iraq was mostly a gop idea. 40% of dems in the house and 60% of dems in the Senate supported it, but about 95% of gop reps and senators supported it.

Gerrymandering - they’ve been sued multiple times due to it after 2010. In fact the dems won the popular vote in the house in 2012 but the gop won more seats.

Voters suppression - voter I’d laws, making it harder to register people, cutting early voting, etc.

Useless weapon programs - I don’t know much about this.

Reproduce repression - the war on planned parenthood.

Constituent avoidance - after covering up trumps crimes and treason, and trying to pass the ahca many have avoided town halls.

Incompetent malevolent cabinets - devos, Carson. Also many position have gone unfilled.

Entrenched racism - ha s been going on since the southern strategy. The efforts to delegitimize our first black president with birtherism.

Failed drug policies - opposition to marijuana legalization. Sessions wanting to increase the drug war. The gop cutting medicaid which helps drug addicts.

Regressive taxation - gop opposed Obamas payroll tax cuts. Federal supply side tax cuts generally result in increased state regressive taxes to close funding gaps. In Oklahoma after passing supply side tax cuts, they passed regressive tax hikes on cars, sporting events and cigarettes. All regressive taxes.

Anti feminism - hard to quantify but it is there. There is a reason most self identified feminists are not Republicans.

Failures of church star separation - Mike pence passing a law allowing Christian discrimination.

16

To anwer the OP: no, the Republican party was absolutely NOT always this bad. IMHO in recent years, it was a one-two punch that has brought them (and, sadly, the whole country) to this clusterfuck.

First, the Tea Party. The mainstream Republican party allowed itself to be taken over by this group of short-sighted, clueless, provincial idiots. The Tea Party has morphed into the Freedom Caucus. The thing they do best is fold their arms across their chests and say, “NO!”

Second, when Obama, the uppity black man, was elected, Mitch McConnell declared war on him. Well, not so much war as he went on strike. He forbade any cooperation, compromise, conversation or anything else with the Obama administration. Obama kept thinking reason would prevail, but McConnell kept his people on a very tight leash. Some say Obama should have pushed harder and been more aggressive, but I think that would have made things worse.

A contributing factor: many Republicans, especially Tea Party types, no longer moved with their families to Washington. They came in to conduct Congressional business but still lived in their home district. Two bad things have come from this. First, they never built the relationships among themselves and especially with the Democrats that fostered the spirit of cooperation and “hands across the aisle” that has always made politics work in Washington. Second, it kept them TOO much in touch with what the hometown voters wanted, and worked against developing a sense of what would be good for the country as a whole.

These are broad brush strokes, but you get the idea.

Washington is broken, and I blame the Republicans.

17

American what ? Cats ?
Anyway, there are two points here:
I doubt if most Republicans believe that. At most they think higher education is bad for poor people.

Mrs DeVos is the poster child that higher education can be harmful. If she worked in a school canteen she could do a lot less harm *.

** Betsy and her husband Dick are chief investors in and board members of Neurocore, a group of brain performance centers offering biofeedback therapy for disorders such as depression, attention deficit disorder, autism, and anxiety. The therapy consists of showing movies to patients and interrupting them when they become distracted, in an effort to retrain their brains.*

Wikipedia

18

That’s the Don Jr. argument taken to health care: “Well, since we didn’t succeed in our stated objectives, no harm no foul, right? Right?”

19

So you can shut up those Dems who claim FDR and the New Deal were something to do with them.

20

I’m typing on my phone. There will be typos.

58% of Republicans think colleges and universities have a negative impact on America.