It all started in 1951, with a book called God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley Jr. When it was written, it was lauded as nonsense, because the republican party agreed with reality, at the time.

It inspired another book written in 1960 called The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater. His book laid the groundwork for the current republican party, calling for the rejection of the “liberal consensus”, which we all know as a fact-based reality.

Republican politicians realized around this time that agreeing with Democrats doesn’t get them elected. Democratic voters will just vote for the Democrat. And, being the business owner party, would always be a statistical minority compared to the population of workers. They needed someone else to vote for them.

Business interests funded think tanks, and came up with the idea to form new coalitions. But not just any coalitions, but those that wanted policies that called to overturn settled law, or were otherwise unconstitutional. Republican leadership doesn’t believe the federal government should be doing things for regular citizens anyway, so they lied and said whatever they needed to to cover up the fact that they never planned on doing anything but enrich their true constituents. Republican politicians got away with this until 2007, when the tea party was formed, and booted the moderate republicans from leadership.

What we’re seeing now is the culmination of the republican party’s initial attempt to stay viable. Their policies are deeply unpopular, and without gerrymandering, the party can’t continue on. But this current scenario is their worst nightmare: the people are experiencing, for the first time in their lives, the full force of how terrible republican policies really are. They own everything that’s happening right now. Arguing that they’re going to destroy the government isn’t just going to be fear-mongering anymore, and won’t be for several generations. They have to establish authoritarian rule, because they’re not going to win another presidency legitimately again for a long time, if ever.

Originally Posted By u/Preaddly At 2025-10-01 09:38:40 AM | Source