3569

Too. Fucking. True.

3570

You’re being a disingenuous asshole. You’re better than that. Maybe.

3571

20 million Russians and Ukrainians would beg to differ.

3572

Yeah, that’s the joke.

3573

Is he though? Because that’s kind of a solid analogy imo.

Both were bad, but one was certainly worse.

3574

Pointing out how what they are saying makes no sense at all is disingenuous.

3575

Gay plague. That’s what they called it, and they laughed. People were dying, horrible deaths, and they laughed, did nothing. Millions died from this while people were laughing.

Welfare Queen, a label that still to this day is toxic and a weapon against black woman with children. These are mothers, in case any forgets.

War on Drugs, hugely unsuccessful campaign popularized by Nixon which has led to the incarceration and decimation of communities all over the nation. By the way, since mostly don’t know because these ridiculous stereotypes, the bulk African Americans don’t actually all live in inner cities but hey I am sure people believing that has done no harm whatsoever.

You wanna know why Trump can do what he can do, because GOP systematically designed system for him to do. So yeah, people want a pass for their leaders because they want pass for themselves. They’re not getting it. This happened, under our watch, and if we’re lucky future generations won’t continue paying the price for it.

So go ahead, sneer, laugh, tell people to get to the back of the bus and shut-up. It’s not something we haven’t heard before.

3576

You wanna know why Stalin can do what he can do, because Lenin systematically designed system for him to do.

3577

Your hero was responsible for a lot deaths that continue today. That’s the fruit of the GOP labor, and nope, I am not going to sit down and let you or anyone else pretend like Trump is the reason Trump can do what he does. That bumbling idiot stumbled into the power they gave him. And yep, there are a lot of privileged people out there that turned a blind eye while other communities paid the price for what the GOP has been doing, for decades.

3578

I don’t know what to add to this. Could Hunter really stay in office through a guilty plea?

3579

Technically, i think he can stay in Congress unless the house votes with a 2/3 majority to expel him.

And the GOP likely wouldn’t do that.

3580

Oh look another precedent. We know how the GOP feels about those. I wonder if they learned that trick from Trump, or you know, all the other pond scum swimming around with him.

3581

You are right, in some respects, Trump exposed the ugly racist and xenophobic views of much of the Republican base. The thoroughly despicable, cheers for Trump as he mocks everyone from women, to reporters with disabilities, the hatred of liberals, that shit predates Trump.

But as today’s impeachment points out, the contempt for Congress, the trashing of the constitution, the obscene embrace of Putin and other dictators, that stuff is not part of the GOP’s DNA. All of that is entirely on Donald Trump. That more than anything makes Trump a real dangers to our system of government, and one which must be destroyed.

Lumping Trump in with past Republicans, causes the large number of Republicans who aren’t fans of Trump to retreat to their tribal position. It may cost Democrats the election, and I shudder to think of what another 4 years of Trump will do this country.

3582

I’ll believe that this stuff is not part of the GOP’s DNA when they stop backing him and actually support the system you and some others claim they supposedly support.

I am putting Trump at the end of a selection of Republican leaders, not all of them, and that selection was chosen purposefully. It is not an accident that the GOP wins the elections in the way they do and that they have a propaganda machine called a news network. This stuff just did not begin with him.

3583

And that’s why the Senate will vote to impeach Trump, right? Yeah.

3584

In this conversation, I am not arguing that, though the existence of Bush makes it arguable.

What I’m arguing is that Trump doesn’t exist in isolation. He’s a symptom of everything that has been wrong with the Republican Party and conservatism for my entire life. As were Bush, Reagan, Nixon. And non-Presidents like Gingrich, McConnell.

He isn’t an aberration. He’s solidly in the continuum.

3585

Put another way, you choose to ignore that Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes all embraced dictators, all lied to Congress and obstructed them, all covered up crimes, all trashed the Constitution or pardoned those who did.

3586

Reagan sold anti-tank weapons to Iran in violation of the law, in order to raise money he wasn’t allowed to raise per the law, in order to give it to right-wing death squads to whom the law prevented giving any money, so that those death squads could use the money to buy weapons and massacre women and children.

I mean, it’s bad. Maybe it’s not bomb Cambodia and saturation bomb Hanoi bad, but it’s bad. Maybe it’s not lie the country into a war with an innocent country in violation of international law, and cause the death of hundreds of thousands bad, but it’s bad.

3587

In 1964 after Goldwater lost (badly), the Republican party faced a choice: Go the route that George Romney (yes, Mitt’s dad) wanted - the politics of inclusion - or take the other road, the one that became known as the Southern strategy. (For reference, here’s the Republican party platform from the Eisenhower era:

(Spoiler for length.)

Summary

  • The Eisenhower Administration will continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will: Stimulate improved job safety of our workers, through assistance to the States, employees and employers;

  • Continue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;

  • Strengthen and improve the Federal-State Employment Service and improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;

  • Protect by law, the assets of employee welfare and benefit plans so that workers who are the beneficiaries can be assured of their rightful benefits;

  • Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;

  • Clarify and strengthen the eight-hour laws for the benefit of workers who are subject to federal wage standards on Federal and Federally-assisted construction, and maintain and continue the vigorous administration of the Federal prevailing minimum wage law for public supply contracts;

  • Extend the protection of the Federal minimum wage laws to as many more workers as is possible and practicable;

  • Continue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;

  • Provide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment.

Now look at the Powell memo from 1972:


That’s the modern Republican party

Problem is, what party is going to win on a platform of corporate rights? Luckily for them, they had evangelicals and southern racists to dupe (not entirely fair, this country is filled with corporate bootlickers supporters, but I digress.) But what political price did the GOP pay for the Goldwater fiasco? Nixon got elected in 1968. And for Nixon? Reagan elected (by a landslide) in 1980.

Republicans have never paid a price for their extremism. (Compare that to the road the Democratic party has taken after the McGovern loss in 1972.) So long as there is a corporate media pretzeling itself to frame the GOP as a legitimate party and an electorate unwilling, unable or incapable of understanding the game being played by Republicans, they probably never will.

Nesire and Scott are right, trump is not an aberration, he’s the end point* on a continuum. (*Magic eight ball says, probably not the end point. There will be someone worse in the future.)

3588

To get back to the original thesis, how does that statement contradict what Timex and other are posting?

I feel like everyone posting the last few hours are just arguing past each other.

“Reagan was not as bad as Trump.”
“He was terrible and he was part of a terrible party.”
“But he wasn’t as bad as Trump.”
“There is a long history of how terrible Republicans have been.”
“Reagan still wasn’t as bad as Trump.”
“Example A, B, and C of GOP terribleness.”
“Trump is the worst.”