rodoheel
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I dunno - I really do think the game changed with Gingrich and the rise of Republican obstructionism as a strategy back in the 90s, happening around the same time as the rise of conservative talk radio. I wasn't old enough to experience the 1988 election, but what happened in that cycle that seems of a kind with the current political temperature and animosity? Wasn't it just the mostly lighthearted making fun of Dukakis looking dumb in a tank?It began way before that. I mean, it's been there since the beginning, but if we're talking about our current cycle -- you have to go back at least as far as 88.
If you want you could point back to the "Southern strategy" of co-opting southern evangelicals into conservatism through culture war grievance that was initiated in the late 70s. To me that's the earliest of the three clear "fundamental shifts in the political atmosphere/discourse" you can identify leading us to where we are today:
--Southern strategy in the late 70s; beginning of the modern "culture war" politics
--Gingrich and the dawn of Republican obstructionism in the 90s, simultaneous with the rise of Limbaugh et al
--The 2008 election and the rise of the Tea Party movement, which after Romney's defeat in 2012 would ultimate coalesce around Trump as MAGA