When did Republicans fully turn to the dark side?

[liberalmediaaddict]

Trying to figure out exactly when the Republican party officially became an extremist, antidemocratic, authoritarian political movement. I used to think it happened after 9/11 and the never ending war on terror. Heard a pundit recently say it was after the financial crisis of 2008 and the rise of the Tea Party

I'm thinking the final straw was the election of Barack Obama especially when he got re-elected. Having a black man elected President seemed to send the GOP over the edge once and for all and into the arms of Donald Trump.

Seems like at this point there's no turning back. The Republicans are fully committed to fascism and minority rule. They've consistently become more detached from reality the past 20 years and it will probably taje another 20 years for them to return to sanity... if they even want to. With Fox News brainwashing their voters I don't see it happening.

[Under The Radar]

1. It started with Newt Gingrich and Clinton's white water investigation

… which evolved into his impeachment. Then strengthened under GW Bush When Karl Rove lock up the alliance with the southern Baptist convention.

[elleng]

3. Was gonna say gingrich.

[Enter stage left]

9. Right on!

Gingrich started it.

[Peregrine Took]

11. + 1 this is what Bill Press always said....it began with Gingrich. n/t

[Mme. Defarge]

17. Oui!

C’est ça.

[Champp]

42. When Gingrich delivered divorce papers to his wife in the hospital

so she could suffer her cancer, and he could continue to frolic obscenely with his Trowfee Sweetie, Caligula or whatever she calls herself, it was a signal to the entire galaxy that Republican "piety" was but a cruel hoax to cover up actual degenerate Republican morals and ethics.

[treestar]

46. +1

With help from Rush Limbaugh.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

2. IMO, with Reagan. Nixon at least resigned.

Reagan was the phony grinning face of evil who opened the door to the circles of hell of Bush and Trump.

[SoonerPride]

6. That's what I think.

The republicans in congress would have sent Nixon packing.

By the 80s they didn’t care that the President was conspiring with Iran

[leftstreet]

18. +1

The last progressive policies coming from the GOP were under Nixon. EPA, OSHA, Safe Drinking Water, Endangered Species, etc

[Nay]

44. I agree that it started with Reagan -- his folksy BS, his dislike of government in general,

and the fact that many Repubs idolized him and a cult of personality developed around him. That cult made sure that Reagan's name was attached to as many buildings, projects, parks, etc., as possible, and that there would be at least one place in each state named after him.

Now we have the cult of personality around Trump, and it's on steroids compared to Reagan's.

Two other boosters were the formation of the Tea Party and the election of a black man, twice, to the presidency.

Edit: Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The existence of Fox News, and the development of the internet -- we're toast now. Propaganda spreads faster than Delta COVID. And it sticks.

[CrackityJones75]

47. Agreed

[SoonerPride]

4. Reagan's administration

They laughed about AIDS

The conspired with IRAN

They sold arms

It was an illegal cabal of all the some filth that ran amok under trumps crime spree

It all started with REAGAN

[Blue_true]

5. Started with Nixon. nt

[SoonerPride]

7. However enough republicans would have impeached him

[DFW]

41. Nixon and Joe McCarthy. 1950s

When they saw what mileage they could get out of the Red Scare, they never looked back.

[Blue_true]

48. Nixon added racism with his "southern strategy" crap.

The division that caused is still ripping at the nation’s soul and is being exploited by people like Trump.

[C_U_L8R]

8. When old man Potter foreclosed on the Building & Loan

But truth is, they've always been assholes.

[Under The Radar]

13. That is it! Potter wrote the GOP manifesto that is used today

Would love to see a sequel to that movie. Poor Ole George Bailey, honesty pays, it just doesn’t pay very much.

[Peregrine Took]

14. Good one! n/t

[BigmanPigman]

10. I think ot was the late 1990s when Newt Gingrich

was Hell bent on impeaching Clinton. The nail in the coffin was Jan., 2017 when the fucking moron and Putin blackmailed the GOP. Paul Ryan embraced tRump immediately and the GOP House fell in line 100%. Then Moscow Mitch followed with losers like Graham kissing his ring/ass.

Of course we could go back to Reagun...he put in place the channels that would harm the country for the next 40 years.

On edit...After posting my reply I read the replies ahead of me and we are all on the same page it seems.

[Johonny]

28. Yeah, it was the 90s when a decade of Rush and FOX news

lead to the crippling of the Rockefeller Republicans and eventual drumming them out of the party. Now a generation raised on toxic (not really politics as the new RW has no real political agenda it's all about self) party politics has imploded the party and essentially crippled the nation.

The liberal wing of the GOP died in the 1990s.

[Florida Bull]

12. I think it might have come in waves,

Especially with particular institutions, and a gradual worsening of the Republican Party.

Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert were toxic for the House of Representatives. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News brainwashed Republican voters. The George W. Bush Administration made things much worse, overall. Mitch McConnell and the Tea Party Movement were toxic for the Senate and voters, making the GOP worse. And, now somebody who is not recognizable as a United States President, but a Fascist dictator who is at least a lackey (if not poodle) of other Fascist dictators.

Ironically, Trump supporters are the real RINOs. They have Republican in their name, but support somebody who wants literal Fascism to replace Republicanism. It is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln!

We need to be assertive, so we can save our Republic.

[JI7]

15. With Nixon and their southern strategy

[lame54]

16. They thought Star Wars was a documentary

[yonder]

19. Newt

[JHB]

20. That's like asking what precise shade of gray marks the boundary between white and black...

You can date it back to Goldwater's loss, after which conservatives decided they had to cleanse the party of moderate and liberal Republicans.

I usually put it as: They've been moving in this general direction for decades, but it was the tag team of Rush and Newt that put them on this precise trajectory. Everything after their rise were matters of degree, not kind.

[agingdem]

22. further back than Goldwater...

Joseph McCarthy.. the Trump/Jordan/Gosar/Gaetz/Cawthorn prototype.... and it was no coincidence that Trump and Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel, connected in a big way...

[JHB]

35. It can go back even farther too, but Goldwater's loss represents the point where...

...the Conservative Movement resolved to turn the Republicans into an exclusively ideologically conservative party, and had the tool set to start that process. It's when they got organized to do it, and do so by whatever means necessary.

[Baked Potato]

21. Palin tickled the nuts to full giggle. McCain thumbed himself back.

But, the ‘Pubes figured out they only needed to get someone in and the crew would do the rest.

Democrats still demand a vision while ‘Pubes demand fantasy.

[Iahotdog]

23. When Gingrich crawled out from under his rock.

[In It to Win It]

24. With Reagan

[Initech]

25. If I had to pinpoint, I would say it was Gamergate.

Because the people who participated in Gamergate were the same online trolls who exist today. See the trolls have been around since the dawn of the internet. But they've always been hidden. Gamergate not only brought them out of the troll closet, it flipped people from being mild mannered to batshit psychopathic crazy. And it spilled over into politics too. It suddenly wasn't about right vs left, it was about making the other side cry. And not only that, it gave rise to the alt right and people like Alex Jones and Joe Rogan.

[liberalmediaaddict]

26. Covid has made them a thousand times worse

They've basically totally given up on reality and rational thinking. From the Big Lie to anti-maskers/antivaxxers the party has become Trumpism on steroids.

The irony is the majority of the crisis that have hit America the hardest happened during Republican administrations. 9/11 and the financial crisis under Bush. The nightmare response to the Covid pandemic nightmare response under Trump.

[DET]

27. Slippery Slope

I think it started with Reagan and his despicable response to the AIDS epidemic, as well as his ridiculous covert operations spearheaded by a total wingnut. Then came Newt, a sociopathic narcissist who gave new meaning to the terms hypocrisy and toxic masculinity. Newt gave birth to the Government shutdown follies. I believe that FOX came into being around the same time. FOX started out fairly innocuously, but it gradually evolved into the toxic, lying ‘news source’ that it is today. Then came the Tea Party loons. Finally, the cherry on the sundae - Trump - gave the stupid, uninformed, hate filled deplorables free rein to operate on their basest impulses. I could never have envisioned how bad things would become. Still can’t believe it.

[BannonsLiver]

29. The seeds were sewn with Reagan

I don’t agree with others that equate Reagan era republicans with the current incarnation. Those guys were soft in comparison. We are now dealing with fully awake, aware fully activated fascists who will literally go to the ventilator joyfully to own us, and those who don’t end up there, end up on the capitol steps trying to subvert democracy by force. We are in previously uncharted territory. It’s totally unlike the Reagan-Bush era even if those eras were stops along the way to the current rot.

I totally agree with the OP’s hypotheses about Obama.

Btw, if anyone would like a look at how we got here from a cultural perspective check out the Woodstock 99 documentary on HBO. It explains a lot and is well worth 90 minutes.

[Brother Mythos]

30. It started with Ronnie RayGun. Facts and truth because a nuisance to be ignored, talked over, or out

under his administration. Ronnie was a master at lying to the American public with a sincere smile on his face. And, his party's membership smiled even more, every single time he did it.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

31. The minute

The conservative fascist party formed.

[GulfCoast66]

32. Nixon's strategy to invite the racist southern democrats into their party.

LBJ knew it would happen but did not expect it would go this far.

Add onto that the invite of the religious right in 80 and the foundation was there. Ironically, Goldwater called that. Said the religious are incapable of the compromise necessary to get democracy done.

[Percy]

33. Gingrich sowed the seeds. FOX fertilized the soil. Obama's election roiled their fury.

Trump cashed in.

[betsuni]

36. Perfect.

[PortTack]

34. If we do well in the midterms, at least add numbers in the senate, tfg runs in '24 and will lose

We will at least be past the orange mass. And, it’s going to force them to at least rethink some things.

Ppl are tired of the drama!!

[pecosbob]

37. 1980...Iran-Contra, missiles to Iran to delay the release of American hostages so Reagan would win

This is where it began. Within a few years they had shifted most of the national tax burden to the middle class and the poor, replaced pensions with speculative stock 401Ks, closed most of the public health hospitals and started giving war materials to local police departments to initiate the war on the poor (the war on drugs).

[FreepFryer]

38. McKinley (Nt)

[FreepFryer]

39. Only about an eighth kidding. They just didn't need to flex as much when they held more power.

McKinley’s GOP successors:

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th, 1901–1909*
William H. Taft, 27th, 1909–1913 corrupt foreign policy corporatist
Warren G. Harding, 29th, 1921–1923 Corrupt conspirey af
Calvin Coolidge, 30th, 1923–1929 corrupt n racist af
Herbert Hoover, 31st, 1929–1933 corrupt n corporate af
Dwight Eisenhower, 34th, 1953–1961 Ultra expansionist but knew how to run an invasion and a booming but stiflingly suppressive postwar society and economy
Richard M. Nixon, 37th, 1969–1974 Misunderstood romantic hero
Gerald Ford, 38th, 1974–1977 the plane guy
Ronald Reagan, 40th, 1981–1989 Well There you go again
George H.W. Bush, 41st, 1989–1993 read my lips
George W. Bush, 43rd, 2001–2009 can’t get fooled again

* breaks the mold but of course he does

[apnu]

40. IMO, when the Libertarians took over

They’d been drifting that way since Newt’s ‘Contract with America’ and W purging moderates.

But it was the Tea Party that was the coming out party. The libertarian outsider funded (think Koch Brothers and others) walked into the vacuum from W’s purge and took over.

All this MAGA garbage is rebranded Tea Party stuff.

[Hortensis]

43. FULLY turned when they got the "dark" RW strongman leader they craved. Trump.

An interactive process -- they created a leader they could give unquestioning obedience to by elevating their choice to power. Their demands of what they required of their leader helped form him, and their depraved, authoritarian leader in turn fed his eager mob's needs by requiring their unquestioning loyalty and obedience.

Trump may still turn out out to be a dud and a failure, but they did have great victories with him and they still reasonably believe that they can smash their way to national domination, with him or their next leader.

[lagomorph777]

45. It wasn't a single big event; it was a series of small events that went unpunished.

Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraq War, baby jails - those are just a few of the highlights.

[dalton99a]

49. It was a long, steady progression - they kept going from worse to worse