The myth of the good Republican survives because ever since Tricky Dick, the next iteration is orders of magnitude worse than the last. Nixon begat Reagan. Reagan begat Gingrich, Delay, Armey, Hastert. That bag of rats begat W and Cheney. And the war criminals begat Trump. And Trump begat Gaetz, Traitor Greene, Bobo, Biggs, Perry, Jordan and the rest of the Christo-fascist MAGA horde.
This is what happens when bad behavior goes unpunished, when we look forward and not backward and when they go low, we go high. The only way to beat the bully is to smack him in the mouth.
I urge everyone to read David Corn’s book “American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy” (just released in paperback with an update). Corn convincingly argues that the roots of Republican extremism and kookiness can be traced back at least 7 decades. In fact the first nutty conspiracy theory I remember was the John Birchers claim that putting fluoride in the water was a Russian plot to control our minds. The Koch brothers’ father Fred was a founding member of that extremist conspiracy-mongering organization.
I also highly recommend Dana MIlbank’s book “The Deconstructionists:The Twenty-five Year Crackup of the Republican Party”. While MIlbank doesn’ disagree with the facts that show Republicans have always had an influential racist, plutocratic, extremist elements he is right that they really went off the rails when Newt gained power. Since then Republicans haven’t tried to hide their craziness or extremism although the mainstream “liberal” media sure did their best to ignore or downplay it. The mainstream media couldn’t even get outraged when Republicans held multiple taxpayer investigations of the insane, vicious, cruel slander that the Clintons had their close friend Vince Foster murdered. Brett Kavanaugh conducted the last of those investigations for Ken Starr although his memos from that time show he went out of his way to reassure his colleagues that he really believed Foster had committed suicide. Clearly Boofin Brett was just winning political points with the far right and it paid him back handsomely. Also I have repeatedly seen mainstream journalists/pundits blame the Dodd decision on Trump but overlook the fact that the two most extreme justices on abortion are Alito, the guy who wrote that opinion and Clarence Thomas who thinks we should also revisit the decision to make birth control legal in all states. Those two were appointed to the court by those “normal, good” Republicans George W and George HW Bush.
And when HW Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, as unqualified at the time as Amy Covid Barrett and Boofin Brett, he claimed he was the single most qualified candidate for the High Court. Short version - the only black lawyer conservative enough to get confirmed by the Republicans. It was an insult then, it continues to be an insult today. And as I recall, Alito was dragged from the primordial ooze after W's nomination of Harriet Meeks blew up in his face.
By responding to everything as Democrats say X but Republicans say Y as if what the Republicans say is factual or has merit, the corporate media utterly fails in its responsibility to report and educate the public. So, they end up favoring the Republican position because they give it legitimacy it does not deserve.
I have been watching the mainstream “liberal” media for decades (I’m so old I clearly remember Eisenhower being president!) From everything I have seen I think most political journalists are liberal on social issues. However most of them have also bought into the Republicans’ conterfactual claims to be the best party for the economy as well as the gods of fiscal responsibility. I suspect that the highest paid journalists also like those tax cuts.
However another major factor is their “Kool Kids of DC High’s” groupthink which has always held that Democrats are a bunch of squabbling kids while Republicans are the macho party of strength. Now that admirations has turned into fear because they have been so badly intimidated by those macho bully boys.
The Kool Kids mentality was particularly obvious when Gore was running as the shocking article “Going After Gore” in Vanity Fair so clearly showed. (Google it). That they NY Times allowed Maureen Dowd to wrrote that Gore’s stand on the environment made him seem “so feminized…that he was practically lactating” — a statement that is breathtaking in its misogyny — says it all. Although David Broder, the revered “Dean of Washington Journalilsts” complaining that Gore had talked so much in his acceptance speech about what he would if elected is a close second for horrifically stupid journalism.
I have actually seen a lot of than on MSNBC and in The NY Times and WaPo as well as The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The New Republic and other sites. For example there has been a lot of reporting on the harms caused by the bans on abortions — women in Texas not being able to get D&C’s for miscarriages even with septic pregnancies and there was a ton of coverage of the 10 year old rape victim in Ohio having to go to Indiana to get an abortion as well as the attempts by Indiana to punish the doctor who performed the procedure. I’m retired so I have plenty of time to follow political media. I have been a huge critic of the mainstream media since Carter but I from what I have seen the media is generally liberal on civil rights and women’s rights and more and more on other issues like abortion and gay rights.
I think it’s even more damaging that the mainstream media ignores Biden’s accomplishments but obsesses about his age. I woke up this morning to this headline at the top of the WaPo’s main page:
“ Post-ABC poll: Biden faces criticism on economy, immigration and age” which was followed in much smaller print by this admission:
“ A finding that shows Trump leading Biden by a wide margin does not match other recent polling, however, suggesting it is an outlier”
The headline might as well have read “Idiot Democrats need to get new candidates” Interestingly that article has been removed from its prominent place at the top of the page.
The article goes on to describe all the very negative findings of of a poll that the WaPo admits can’t be trusted (that’s what “outlier” means). Meanwhile Democrats keep winning special elections — elections the polls predict they will lose — and the media chooses to ignore that fact which goes against their chosen narrative which is to implicitly treat Biden’s age as if it’s a scandal and to downplay the fact that he continues to do the job very well. At least they seem to have stopped trashing Harris but they are still ignoring all the things she does, too.
I really don’t understand how our six- and seven-figure political media stars can reconcile “Trump is an aberration in the Republican Party” with “Trump is cruising to his third straight Republican nomination,” but then I’m not one of them and have no desire to be.
Also, I had multiple conversations with conservatives in the late 1970s and the 1980s where they’d say “I WILL say ONE thing for the Soviet Union” followed by like five minutes of nonstop praise for the Soviet Union, so even that aspect isn’t new.
Thank you, Oliver Willis. This narrative is important, as memories are short and those who didn't live through the Old GOP's Sins rely on truth from the rest of us, who did.
I saw an anti-Trump Republican group hitting Trump for his comments about building heights on 9/11 on the anniversary this month (which in full context Trump's comments weren't even that bad). I just got kind of angry that a group of people who spent two decades weaponizing and politicizing 9/11 to maintain their power would somehow try and claim the moral high ground over Trump.
There are those of us with long memories in politics and we remember all the crazy things Republicans have done. I wish it was more common than it is.
Always wondered who was responsible for Sarah Palin. Stupid move, he didn’t know her. He showed total lack of judgment. Who suggested her? Who foisted her on the American public?
In his defense she was the governor of Alaska who was popular with both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats particularly like that she had forced oil companies to pay more in royalties for drilling on public lands. But Palin had not been in office long so was very inexperienced an untested which made that recommendation extremely reckless. . Kristol wanted someone who would add excitement to the ticket and he surely got that, much to his horror.
So-called conservatives like Romney aided and abetted the Republican descent into Trumpism. Re the Coppins excerpt, I lost track of the number of times Romney didn’t see something coming. How can anyone not in denial miss what is in front of their face? It’s easy when you’re culpable, I guess.
It’s more than a matter of degree. It’s the difference between being the opposing team versus upending the rules of the game. The Bushes and Reagan were the opposing team by and large, Gingrich and his progeny like Trump are qualitatively different in that they want to bring down the entire constitutional superstructure. McCain was merely the opposing team, as are Cheney and Romney. Your essay fails to make this distinction.
The distinction is moot, since the GOP has pursued an anti-democratic project since Goldwater - suppressing the vote, especially that of Blacks and other groups that tend to vote Democratic; gerrymandering congressional districts to ensure control of state legislatures, even when they don't get the majority of the vote; "weaponizing" (the GOP's current favorite word, which applies only to Democratic administrations) government departments like the IRS and DOJ against "enemies," going back to Nixon's day; the Swiftboating of Kerry, etc. (These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head). They may have been slightly more subtle about it than they are now, but they've always been about pursuing power, regardless of how popular their policies were.
Well if the GOP has been trying to suppress the Black vote since Goldwater, they’ve really botched the job. Black voter turnout has been steadily growing since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in Goldwater’s era, and is now much higher at 52% than either Hispanics or Asians in the low 40%.
It's interesting that you left off Nixon from your parade of Republican shame starting with Barry Goldwater and it's still (rightfully and thoroughly) damning. They had one somewhat decent president with Eisenhower, so long ago that only people who remember his presidency at all are at least 70 years old and more typically 75 and up. (Before that they had Hoover and a parade of other bad presidents until you get to Theodore Roosevelt, the only other exception since the beginning of the 20th century.) Pretty much the Republican Party had a good run until it abandoned Reconstruction in 1877 and has had a couple of accidentally good presidents since. Its entire history is built on less than 28 years of decent presidents (12 of them in the 19th century, 16 in the 20th, and none since 1961) over the last 160 years. And its current members repudiate anything good the party ever did!
The myth of the good Republican survives because ever since Tricky Dick, the next iteration is orders of magnitude worse than the last. Nixon begat Reagan. Reagan begat Gingrich, Delay, Armey, Hastert. That bag of rats begat W and Cheney. And the war criminals begat Trump. And Trump begat Gaetz, Traitor Greene, Bobo, Biggs, Perry, Jordan and the rest of the Christo-fascist MAGA horde.
Lots of tragic begetting!
This is what happens when bad behavior goes unpunished, when we look forward and not backward and when they go low, we go high. The only way to beat the bully is to smack him in the mouth.
Sounds like Ms Obama wants to kiss the mouth of the bullies.
I urge everyone to read David Corn’s book “American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy” (just released in paperback with an update). Corn convincingly argues that the roots of Republican extremism and kookiness can be traced back at least 7 decades. In fact the first nutty conspiracy theory I remember was the John Birchers claim that putting fluoride in the water was a Russian plot to control our minds. The Koch brothers’ father Fred was a founding member of that extremist conspiracy-mongering organization.
I also highly recommend Dana MIlbank’s book “The Deconstructionists:The Twenty-five Year Crackup of the Republican Party”. While MIlbank doesn’ disagree with the facts that show Republicans have always had an influential racist, plutocratic, extremist elements he is right that they really went off the rails when Newt gained power. Since then Republicans haven’t tried to hide their craziness or extremism although the mainstream “liberal” media sure did their best to ignore or downplay it. The mainstream media couldn’t even get outraged when Republicans held multiple taxpayer investigations of the insane, vicious, cruel slander that the Clintons had their close friend Vince Foster murdered. Brett Kavanaugh conducted the last of those investigations for Ken Starr although his memos from that time show he went out of his way to reassure his colleagues that he really believed Foster had committed suicide. Clearly Boofin Brett was just winning political points with the far right and it paid him back handsomely. Also I have repeatedly seen mainstream journalists/pundits blame the Dodd decision on Trump but overlook the fact that the two most extreme justices on abortion are Alito, the guy who wrote that opinion and Clarence Thomas who thinks we should also revisit the decision to make birth control legal in all states. Those two were appointed to the court by those “normal, good” Republicans George W and George HW Bush.
And when HW Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, as unqualified at the time as Amy Covid Barrett and Boofin Brett, he claimed he was the single most qualified candidate for the High Court. Short version - the only black lawyer conservative enough to get confirmed by the Republicans. It was an insult then, it continues to be an insult today. And as I recall, Alito was dragged from the primordial ooze after W's nomination of Harriet Meeks blew up in his face.
By responding to everything as Democrats say X but Republicans say Y as if what the Republicans say is factual or has merit, the corporate media utterly fails in its responsibility to report and educate the public. So, they end up favoring the Republican position because they give it legitimacy it does not deserve.
I have been watching the mainstream “liberal” media for decades (I’m so old I clearly remember Eisenhower being president!) From everything I have seen I think most political journalists are liberal on social issues. However most of them have also bought into the Republicans’ conterfactual claims to be the best party for the economy as well as the gods of fiscal responsibility. I suspect that the highest paid journalists also like those tax cuts.
However another major factor is their “Kool Kids of DC High’s” groupthink which has always held that Democrats are a bunch of squabbling kids while Republicans are the macho party of strength. Now that admirations has turned into fear because they have been so badly intimidated by those macho bully boys.
The Kool Kids mentality was particularly obvious when Gore was running as the shocking article “Going After Gore” in Vanity Fair so clearly showed. (Google it). That they NY Times allowed Maureen Dowd to wrrote that Gore’s stand on the environment made him seem “so feminized…that he was practically lactating” — a statement that is breathtaking in its misogyny — says it all. Although David Broder, the revered “Dean of Washington Journalilsts” complaining that Gore had talked so much in his acceptance speech about what he would if elected is a close second for horrifically stupid journalism.
I have actually seen a lot of than on MSNBC and in The NY Times and WaPo as well as The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The New Republic and other sites. For example there has been a lot of reporting on the harms caused by the bans on abortions — women in Texas not being able to get D&C’s for miscarriages even with septic pregnancies and there was a ton of coverage of the 10 year old rape victim in Ohio having to go to Indiana to get an abortion as well as the attempts by Indiana to punish the doctor who performed the procedure. I’m retired so I have plenty of time to follow political media. I have been a huge critic of the mainstream media since Carter but I from what I have seen the media is generally liberal on civil rights and women’s rights and more and more on other issues like abortion and gay rights.
I think it’s even more damaging that the mainstream media ignores Biden’s accomplishments but obsesses about his age. I woke up this morning to this headline at the top of the WaPo’s main page:
“ Post-ABC poll: Biden faces criticism on economy, immigration and age” which was followed in much smaller print by this admission:
“ A finding that shows Trump leading Biden by a wide margin does not match other recent polling, however, suggesting it is an outlier”
The headline might as well have read “Idiot Democrats need to get new candidates” Interestingly that article has been removed from its prominent place at the top of the page.
The article goes on to describe all the very negative findings of of a poll that the WaPo admits can’t be trusted (that’s what “outlier” means). Meanwhile Democrats keep winning special elections — elections the polls predict they will lose — and the media chooses to ignore that fact which goes against their chosen narrative which is to implicitly treat Biden’s age as if it’s a scandal and to downplay the fact that he continues to do the job very well. At least they seem to have stopped trashing Harris but they are still ignoring all the things she does, too.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiDld-Uo8OBAxWml2oFHS7LCzcQFnoECBgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.axios.com%2F2023%2F09%2F21%2Fdemocrats-special-elections-winning-streak&usg=AOvVaw2xtS4MSIR0P12zFEY9UUcA&opi=89978449
Brilliant Oliver. Powerful. Thanks for this brutally honest assessment of the mess we are in.
"The reality of the situation is that Trump is the logical endpoint of what his predecessors did."
1000x this. Thank you.
Sadly, he’s not the endpoint
I really don’t understand how our six- and seven-figure political media stars can reconcile “Trump is an aberration in the Republican Party” with “Trump is cruising to his third straight Republican nomination,” but then I’m not one of them and have no desire to be.
Also, I had multiple conversations with conservatives in the late 1970s and the 1980s where they’d say “I WILL say ONE thing for the Soviet Union” followed by like five minutes of nonstop praise for the Soviet Union, so even that aspect isn’t new.
Thank you, Oliver Willis. This narrative is important, as memories are short and those who didn't live through the Old GOP's Sins rely on truth from the rest of us, who did.
Afraid that whoever comes after Trump will be worse than him. After Eisenhower there was a steady decline to the bottom of the barrel.
We are headed to more evil, but I don’t think anybody will ever top Trump
I saw an anti-Trump Republican group hitting Trump for his comments about building heights on 9/11 on the anniversary this month (which in full context Trump's comments weren't even that bad). I just got kind of angry that a group of people who spent two decades weaponizing and politicizing 9/11 to maintain their power would somehow try and claim the moral high ground over Trump.
There are those of us with long memories in politics and we remember all the crazy things Republicans have done. I wish it was more common than it is.
Always wondered who was responsible for Sarah Palin. Stupid move, he didn’t know her. He showed total lack of judgment. Who suggested her? Who foisted her on the American public?
Steve Schmidt was McCain’s campaign advisor who recommended Palin. He has since regretted that choice.
Actually it was Bill Kristol who first promoted Palin.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/bill-kristol-doesnt-want-any-more-credit-sarah-palins-career/311984/
In his defense she was the governor of Alaska who was popular with both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats particularly like that she had forced oil companies to pay more in royalties for drilling on public lands. But Palin had not been in office long so was very inexperienced an untested which made that recommendation extremely reckless. . Kristol wanted someone who would add excitement to the ticket and he surely got that, much to his horror.
So-called conservatives like Romney aided and abetted the Republican descent into Trumpism. Re the Coppins excerpt, I lost track of the number of times Romney didn’t see something coming. How can anyone not in denial miss what is in front of their face? It’s easy when you’re culpable, I guess.
It’s more than a matter of degree. It’s the difference between being the opposing team versus upending the rules of the game. The Bushes and Reagan were the opposing team by and large, Gingrich and his progeny like Trump are qualitatively different in that they want to bring down the entire constitutional superstructure. McCain was merely the opposing team, as are Cheney and Romney. Your essay fails to make this distinction.
The distinction is moot, since the GOP has pursued an anti-democratic project since Goldwater - suppressing the vote, especially that of Blacks and other groups that tend to vote Democratic; gerrymandering congressional districts to ensure control of state legislatures, even when they don't get the majority of the vote; "weaponizing" (the GOP's current favorite word, which applies only to Democratic administrations) government departments like the IRS and DOJ against "enemies," going back to Nixon's day; the Swiftboating of Kerry, etc. (These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head). They may have been slightly more subtle about it than they are now, but they've always been about pursuing power, regardless of how popular their policies were.
Well if the GOP has been trying to suppress the Black vote since Goldwater, they’ve really botched the job. Black voter turnout has been steadily growing since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in Goldwater’s era, and is now much higher at 52% than either Hispanics or Asians in the low 40%.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/12/key-facts-about-black-eligible-voters-in-2022/
Both parties gerrymander, but the GOP is better at it.
The DOJ is currently going after Trump.
I am in agreement with your politics, but I am constrained by ethical and epistemic values to live in a world of facts.
Facts:
https://www.facingsouth.org/2022/04/floridas-desantis-erases-two-districts-sent-black-people-congress
https://apnews.com/article/alabama-redistricting-congressional-map-4ba19d36cd1a5eba5f08f2752ce40ff9
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/north-carolina-judges-toss-maps-slam-gerrymandering-stinging-ruling-n1049411
https://www.wpr.org/lawsuit-seeks-overturn-wisconsins-republican-drawn-legislative-maps-redistricting
Note taken. As I said, both parties gerrymander, but the GOP is better at it.
https://www.vox.com/22961590/redistricting-gerrymandering-house-2022-midterms
There was also the attempted coup against FDR.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s
There were lots of pro Nazi Congressman in the period before and during FDR. Remember lucky Lindy.?
100% 👏👏👏
Great piece, Mr. Willis.
I guess one difference between Republicans, then and now, is that more and more of the worst examples are getting elected.
Now, on to what can we do about it.
I was not aware that there were any...
Thank you so much for this, it summarizes how I have thought about this all along perhaps the only halfway decent republican was Eisenhower
It's interesting that you left off Nixon from your parade of Republican shame starting with Barry Goldwater and it's still (rightfully and thoroughly) damning. They had one somewhat decent president with Eisenhower, so long ago that only people who remember his presidency at all are at least 70 years old and more typically 75 and up. (Before that they had Hoover and a parade of other bad presidents until you get to Theodore Roosevelt, the only other exception since the beginning of the 20th century.) Pretty much the Republican Party had a good run until it abandoned Reconstruction in 1877 and has had a couple of accidentally good presidents since. Its entire history is built on less than 28 years of decent presidents (12 of them in the 19th century, 16 in the 20th, and none since 1961) over the last 160 years. And its current members repudiate anything good the party ever did!