A proper summation by AC
The harsh truth is this: America elected a Black president, and it broke the Republican Party.
The GOP was always big, hypocritical, and largely full of crap, even borderline cultish in how they tied their political beliefs in with religion in what I used to call "Republicanity" ― but nothing like what we saw after the 2008 election, when Barack Obama was elected.
I actually went into more detail about this on my Substack a few weeks ago.
After Obama was elected, out of nowhere, the Tea Party sprung up ― which was really just "MAGA lite."
There are so many conservatives, mostly white rural folks ― the same type of voters Republicans began courting back in the '60s when they enacted the Southern Strategy ― who just lost their damn minds at the thought of a Black president.
Out of nowhere, a Black president with a "funny-sounding name" was a "secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was living under an alias, didn't actually go to college, faked two forms of his birth certificate, was trying to use Ebola to kill white people, and was using military exercises to take over 'red' states and confiscate guns."
The amount of absolutely batsh*t-crazy conspiracies I saw flooding the conservative media about Obama was unlike anything we had ever seen before.
Hell, Republicans began openly admitting that their only legislative priority was doing whatever they could to deny him a second term.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, October 2010: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
Not help the president improve the economy that was just rocked by the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. Not pass legislation to help all Americans. Not combat terrorism and protect our nation's national security after years of war.
Nope ― just do whatever they could to sabotage Obama, hoping that by doing so, he would fail to be reelected.
And that line was happily embraced by conservative voters.
After eight years of the GOP's attempts to undermine this president, they failed. The economy was strong, we saw a historic streak of private-sector job growth, and everything was so good economically that Donald Trump's biggest claim to fame from his first term was trying to take credit for the economy Obama left him.
Then came 2015. Trump launched his campaign, pandering to the absolute worst parts of society ― the very parts the Tea Party had been empowering over the previous eight years, the "deplorables" (yes, Hillary Clinton was right) ― and, in less than a year, the biggest con artist on the planet had completely taken over the Republican Party.
Republicans were so desperate for anyone to lead what had become a cult that they rushed to sell out to the type of dishonest, lowlife, scumbag piece of crap who was willing to say anything, no matter how absurd or dishonest, just as long as he felt it was what conservative voters wanted to hear.
Millions of mostly poor and middle-class rural Americans suddenly believed that a wealthy guy born into a rich family in New York City, who had never done a day's worth of real work in his life, hadn't even pumped gas or gone grocery shopping for himself once in his entire life, and who literally lived at his own golf resort or inside his own New York City high-rise ― he "knew what they were going through and understood their problems."
What a joke.
Nothing since the rise of Trump has made any sense. Republicans have performed one act of mental gymnastics after another, twisting themselves up like pretzels, trying to defend the indefensible and the most incompetent president in U.S. history.
A Republican Party that spent years claiming they supported him because he wouldn't get us involved in any new wars, especially in Iran, then rushed to support his war in Iran.
The same party that impeached Bill Clinton for a consensual affair with a White House staffer sold out to a multiple adulterer who's cheated on every single one of his wives, with recent reports of a very creepy and somewhat alarming relationship with a 35-year-old staffer who even the Secret Service reportedly flagged over concerns about her relationship with Trump, and they don't seem to care at all.
A GOP that used to claim it was all about the "free market" and "not raising taxes" was now all-in on blanket tariffs and massive tax hikes on American consumers.
They've always been hypocrites ― but now they were completely and unapologetically shameless.
For example, their completely fake "outrage" over Sen. Jon Ossoff's very innocuous comments regarding Trump and Natalie Harp's relationship, where all he did was mention that she's very close to him and often travels with the president ― and the conservative media meltdown. They claimed the remarks were "tasteless" and "demeaning to women."
The same people who had no problem with Trump telling a female reporter "quite piggy," or who've made excuses for his endless list of disgusting comments he's made about other people ― including mocking the death of Rob Reiner and celebrating the death of Robert Mueller ― were "outraged" by Ossoff's comments.
Again, shameless hypocrites.
I could write an entire book of all the examples of how absolutely batshit-crazy the GOP has become since 2008. A party that's so incredibly detached even from where it was in 2012 that, at their last 2024 presidential convention, there was practically no representation from the party that predated Trump's rise to power in 2016. No George W. Bush, no one from their 2012 presidential ticket, not even Trump's first vice president ― hell, almost no one from his first administration.
That's how radical today's GOP has become.
The bottom line is, this country elected its first Black president ― and it broke the Republican Party.
