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What went wrong with the Republican party?

Seems like 10 - 20 years ago, being a Republican had some meaning you knew where they stood on things. Then recently it seems like with the Tea party and ultra-religious right they have lost their way. Not even beginning to count the insanity that has happened to them with trump.

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Northwest · M

I believe these folks have always been there, they just did not have a political party they can belong to.

Up until the 1960s, they used to identify as Democrats

Later, they identified as Republican

Later, they followed the Tea Party

Now they follow the Trump party.

They are racists, xenophobes, misogynists and haters.

They were really never Democrats, or Republicans.

SomeLikeItHot ·

@Northwest I strongly agree that his base stemmed from the "Tea Party".

CopperCicada · M

@Northwest This is sort of interesting. It speaks to some earlier comments I made about parties losing their ideological identities. It seems the GOP became a slush bucket of a lot of different views. The DEM has done the same. A democratic socialist running as a party DEM. Peculiar. It speaks to not really having party identities beyond "beating the other guy".

I get it. We win elections on such small margins. You have to pander to the religious conservatives, the fiscal conservatives, the social conservatives. If you can grab the white supremacists, racists, xenophobes then you have a larger slice of pie. Trump stumped very differently in different areas. Capturing different pieces of the demographic pie.

Bernie did the same. Grabbing disenfranchised DEM's, progressives, socialists, greens, libertarians and even conservatives. The difference is that he had an ideological position. Trump does not.