The Republican Party really started its decline to what it has become today beginning in 1980 with the advent of the Reagan years that were rife with scandal. This was also the inception of supply side economics which has persisted in GOP politics like a zombie to the present day despite it never having worked and showing it never will work. As evidence of Hillary Clinton’s debate jab at Trump in 2016 of “Trumped up Trickle Down”, once the dog caught the bus and Trump was improbably elected, he inadvertently dusted off Arthur Laffer to prove her point.
Anyway, the precipitous downturn of the GOP began after the G.W. Bush years, Bush may have been an awful president, who arguably beat Al Gore and then proceeded to drive the country almost into a depression in his 8 years, but he actually believed in his own vision for the country, as much as I disagreed with it personally, then there was failed candidate Romney who I also disagreed with on similar grounds. Trump however is unburdened by any of this, as he believes in nothing beyond his own power, avarice, glorification and aggrandizement.
After the 8 years of the Obama Presidency, which was a time of stark contrast to the mess of the Bush presidency, I believed we had turned a corner, and I would never see another Republican President in my lifetime and that people had learned their lesson. It was then that the GOP simply ran totally out of ideas and nominated the worst person and candidate to have ever been foisted upon us as a presidential candidate, a game show host and self-proclaimed “successful businessman” who improbably built up a cult of personality that many gullible fools bought into and continue to do so to this day. A man who lies like others breathe. Even an attempted coup based on his stolen election lies has failed to dissuade his numerous rabid followers and now in 2024 he has predicably gotten exponentially worse than the wretch we always knew him to be.
This addled charlatan and his enablers must be defeated soundly for this nation to continue on and heal from all of his totalitarian demagoguery and posturing. Then maybe from the ashes of what remains of the Republican Party they can rebuild themselves into something actually resembling a real political party and not the vehicle for a cruel and pompous would-be emperor they currently are.
I am truly looking forward to the day when MAGA merch. can only be found dumpster diving and all of this foolishness is, like its progenitor, largely forgotten and only mentioned as a cautionary tale.
