The Republican masses thought that Biff Trump was one of or cared about them, so how did they get so disconnected from their party to which had next to zero public dissension since the 1980s?
Biff was different, he spoke his mind and to too many Republicans that symbolized bravery or courage and the people could relate to it or so they thought.
I believe the other side's "discipline" aka; Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment contributed to their internal rigidity making it more difficult for them to adapt and this in turn paralyzed them to the rise of the Trump within their own party.
By H.W. BRANDS April 05, 2017
Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher and political pundit of the 1930s, used to joke, “I am a member of no organized party: I am a Democrat.” In those days, the Democrats were America’s party of dysfunction, an unstable coalition of urban Northern liberals and rural Southern conservatives. Occasionally, the two wings worked together, as during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, but more often they clashed, right up until the party splintered during the 1960s, as Southern conservatives bailed out to join the Republicans.
(snip)
His insistence that Republicans refrain from criticizing one another was self-serving. As the favorite in the Republican effort to oust Democratic Governor Pat Brown, Reagan hoped to keep his GOP rivals from damaging him before the general election.
But Reagan had a broader vision as well. The 1964 presidential contest had left the Republicans more divided than they’d been in decades. The party’s liberal and moderate wings, supporters of Nelson Rockefeller, blamed conservatives for Barry Goldwater’s disastrous defeat, in which Lyndon Johnson won more than 480 electoral votes as Democrats took two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress. Reagan had already fixed his eyes on the White House, and he knew he couldn’t get there leading a fractured party.
(snip)
Reagan earned a reputation as the “Teflon president,” to whom scandal and criticism never stuck. The reason they didn’t was that voters thought Reagan was a nice guy. Even those who disliked his policies had difficulty disliking him. He survived the Iran-Contra scandal not because people believed his side of the story—polls showed they didn’t—but because they didn’t want to see an amiable old man disgraced.
Fast forward to 2017. The Republicans have become the party of dysfunction. They inherited the Southern conservatives who abandoned the Democrats, and are now as deeply split as the Democrats ever were—even as they hold the presidency, the Congress, and a majority of the nation’s state governments.
(snip)
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/11th-commandment-gop-republican-reagan-trump-214982/
= new reply since forum marked as read
