The devolution of the Republican party into a party of right wing madness

[Hardkill]

I decided to create a mega thread on how the Republican Party devolved over time from the party of liberalism, progressive policies, higher principles, and economic intervention to a party of radical right-wing views, reactionary policies, shamelessness, and economic irresponsibility.

I will be posting videos on here that provide different sources excellent of in-depth explanations in chronological order with some of my own commentary pertaining to each of the vids how the party change over time from the mid 1800s to present time.

[Hardkill]

It started all the way back to basically the beginning of the Gilded Age, which spanned the last three decades of the 19th century. The Republican Party during this period began to no longer become the party of Lincoln or Grant. They believed that they already had done enough reforms for blacks and other minorities throughout the country and that it was time for them to focus much more on building the nation's economy and businesses.

Although around the beginning of the 1900s came the early 20th century progressive era of politics, and Teddy Roosevelt and his followers during the 1900s decade made the Republican party become liberal/progressive again.

Unfortunately, by around the late 1910s to early 1920s, progressive era came to an end and the Republican party ultimately trended back towards conservatism. In fact, this was end the GOP decided that they would be the party of big business.

The reason the progressive era ended was because most of the people in America by the late 1910s/early 20s finally got tired of progressivism and the enormous amount of changes that the government had already made to the whole country for approx. two straight decades. There also was a lot of racial/ethnic backlash that occurred throughout the whole country because so many of angry white male protestants throughout the whole country who became very upset with the massive increase in immigrants and the growing population of black and brown people that was occurring during the early 1900s.

 

By the mid 1900s, the Republican party did become much more moderate after the Great Depression for a period of time. However, by the late 60s to early 70s, the Republican Party resumed its devolutionary process:

 

 

Finally, Noam Chomsky explains how after the civil right era, the GOP came up with the idea of starting culture wars and appealing to the American people's conservative cultures values as a way to distract the general public from essential policy issues, but still being able to win over their votes. That way, the Republican Party would be able to elect more and more pro-business conservatives into office would be able to enact all kinds of handouts and tax cuts for the rich and corporations. They would also be able to appoint and confirm more and more pro-corporate judges who would rule in favor of the rich and corporations. 

 

Finally, by the late 80 to early 90s that's when the Republican party accelerated their shift towards right-wing extremism as explained by Vanderbilt University historian, Nicole Hemmer.

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by Hardkill