Why Did Republicans Abandon Conservatism?

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A rising tide lifts all boats and fuck you if you can't afford a boat.

Sorta. In a seemingly bygone area, the yacht rockers still wanted the serfs to survive, so many canoes, bounded-branch rafts, and jetsam existed to prevent drowning. In the rapidly accelerating tech-theocracy, in an environment of unprecedented wealth for the wealthy, they want millions, if not billions, to drown. These sinister forces view AI and robotics as the servants of tomorrow, and other humans are merely useless eaters. See Curtis Yarvin, the guru to the tech-theocrats.
 
A couple of things wrong with your history. Small government Conservatives don't increase the national debt by 280%. They don't make deals with terrorists holding American hostages.

Evangelicals entered the political fray as Carter supporters. However, he cut funding to schools like Liberty and Bob Jones because they refused to integrate. Since Reagan blew the racist dog whistle when he had the campaign event in Philadelphia , Mississippi, Falwell rallied the Moral Majority behind Reagan. It was only after Reagan failed to deliver on that, that the Moral Majority and Protestants in general took on abortion as a terrible sin. Previously, as an example , the Southern Baptist Convention had actually supported Roe vs Wade.

That's a much time as I'm willing to spend on this for now, but the rest seems about as reliable.

Here is a great explainer of how anti-abortion (pro life) became a proxy for racial segregation. It's not a regular Politico piece. It was written by Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College, and the author of Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.

 
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I want to deal with one single stripe of rancid idiocy above. Obama was not far left, he generally governed as a moderate conservative along the lines of Nixon, and you don't need to take my word for it:


Next, we have gone over this so many times, but the Republican Party now is both corporate-fascist and Christo-fascist, now with Musk racing into oligarchical framework that will never be undone.

The primary issue however is consolidation and utilization of Venn diagram kind of overlap of America's most ignorant citizens as a political constituency by the Republican Party since the late sixties. This cohort is primarily a tactical success centered on both The Southern Strategy and the alliance with "The Moral Majority" and Christian protestant (and to some extent Catholic)fundamentalism.

The embrace of racism led to a consolidation of all white racists as a permanent but gradually decaying constituency. Much has been written about how the election of Obama utterly galvanized this group, and funded by the Kochs and others, led to massive turnout of this group as "The Tea Party" in the 2010 election at the same time as Democrats failed to get out and vote. But the decades earlier alliance with fundamentalism was welded to Republican involved their new rejection of science with attacks on evolution (with attempts to replace biology with creationism) and a rejection of basic science ideas related to fetal development as connected with the abortion issue.

Being anti-abortion, a new stance fabricated culturally in the seventies, was another tactic of the Republican Party to gather in all Christian fundamentalists, also a group with much lower education and intelligence. All of this Republican rejection of science was readily and powerfully used by the fossil fuel industries and their late eighties in their gargantuan and massively successful disinformation campaign against science on global warming, in which they easily allied with the Republican Party's extant capture of Christian fundamentalists and anti-science issues I just mentioned. All of this folded right in with the Republican embrace of racism with the Southern Strategy, to fully capture as constituency the most ignorant Americans. It was not their base, it was their main component. This both advanced and created in Republican voters a general false view of science and academia generally as antagonistic to Christian beliefs as a whole. It all worked to consolidate the Republican Party as the comfortable home for America's least intelligent large constituency.

Numerous academics and even conservative pundits (like in my link above) have written many essays and books about everything I have just described. These kinds of conservative voices have been voted out and banished due to the systems in place.
 
1. Unions are not government.

That was just an example of how liberals want to manipulate outcomes that Republicans don't support.
This goes back to power. Conservatives are for the moneyed interests. The business owners and shareholders have the power,

I'm going to somewhat play devil's advocate here. Business owners and shareholders have the power. Yes. The business owner and shareholders should have the power. The business owner is the one of absorbed the risk of starting a business and the shareholders also have significant financial risk. They are the ones who should have the power as far as how the business is run. Does that view mean you want people to be poor, minorities to be taken advantage of or does it just mean, in principle, you believe that the business owner should be able to run his business as he pleases?
and they use that power to subjugate those who don't have it. The conservative dream of unregulated capitalism woodley, to all manor of bad outcomes. What conservatives call job, killing regulations are simply public protection.
I don't think most Republicans want fully unregulated capitalism. Again, it's really a matter of degrees of regulation.

What does it mean to say the owners and shareholders "subjugate" employees? The relationship between employee and business is voluntary. If you don't like the way a business treats you, they can't force you to work there, so you leave and find a better business to work for, right?

Does wanting people to be able to own guns mean you WANT people to wrongly die from gun shots? Does is mean you INTEND for people to die in drive-by shootings, robberies, etc or is that just an unfortunate byproduct of a freedom/principle you believe in?
 
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To answer the original question, the most immediate cause was the Republicans' loss of the West Coast, especially California. There have been two CA governors who went on to be president: Nixon and Reagan. Orange County, CA was basically the headquarters of American conservatism (note: the Claremont Institute is located there).

Look at the 1976 presidential map. It's close to the opposite of our maps today. When Pubs lost California, having already lost NY and then-populous Michigan, their only path to national relevance was picking off the southern states. And the southern states were never conservative. They were just racist, and happy to throw in with whomever would let them discriminate, or if they couldn't, at least feel good about wanting to.

Orange County was all about the classic Eisenhower-Reagan conservatism. California was dominated by the military industrial complex; they wanted a strong foreign policy (and the demand for ships and aircraft that came with it). It was an exporting state, so it favored free trade. It was rich, so it liked the trickle down economics. And that was the ideology that dominated the Republican party.

So what happened in California? Well, I'm far from an expert on CA history; and even if I was, I couldn't encapsulate everything that happened in a message board post. I can say with confidence, though, that much of it was about brown people. For thirty years, they had been bringing Mexican farm workers into the US on guest worker programs (e.g. bracero), and those Mexicans had babies; and when the babies grew up, they started to fight back against the anti-immigrant, racist sentiment in Orange County. And California also had a great university system, and a high % of people attending college, and we know what happens when people attend great universities. They tend to lose their prejudices.

It's no coincidence that the idea of reinterpreting the 14th Amendment to exclude birthright citizenship was developed and championed by the Claremont Institute (which is why I mentioned it above). Figures associated with Claremont include John Eastman and Michael Anton. They understood that birthright citizenship was a threat to their particular political program, so instead of modifying their politics, they went after birthright citizenship. But there was no market for that shit in CA any more. They had to find more fertile ground. You know, the south.

Again, southern states were never conservative. White southerners were never conservative. Hell, FDR's base was the Solid South. White southerners who suffered during the Depression were eager for Social Security and Medicare (note: it was Reagan in the 1960s, not any southern governor, who called Medicare socialist). But just like LBJ said, you can get a white southerner to sign onto anything if it makes them feel better than black people. And that's pretty much it. All that shit that the Southerners claim to value today -- anti-abortion, Second Amendment, etc. -- has never been more than a rationalization, when in fact the problem is that they just didn't want to be in a political coalition with black people.

True story: in the 1960s, the NRA was pro-gun control. It wasn't until the 1970s that the Second Amendment bullshit got started. And who started it? Some dude from Texas who killed a Mexican as a teenager, but escaped prosecution because it was the 30s or 40s. The Southern Baptists were pro-abortion -- until, as many other posters have observed, the feds came for Bob Jones U (and in the West, BYU). All roads in Southern politics point back to racism.

Hell, even the existence of Southern politics is about the racism. What the fuck do Texas and South Carolina have in common? Why would they vote in lockstep pretty much all the time? The demographics are different. The economies are very different. The economic structures are different. And Missouri and Arkansas are different from both. And yet, these states have ALWAYS been in a political coalition. They were rebels together. They were New Dealers together. And now they are GOP/MAGA together. The common thread is the racism. That's what it has been about for 200 years.

And thus we get MAGA. They were never interested in the Orange Country Republicanism. What happened was that Orange County Republicanism died with the Orange County Republican party (I believe HRC was the first Dem to win Orange County, and it's remained Dem ever since). What remained was the exclusionary populism.
 
I'm going to somewhat play devil's advocate here. Business owners and shareholders have the power. Yes. The business owner and shareholders should have the power. The business owner is the one of absorbed the risk of starting a business and the shareholders also have significant financial risk. They are the ones who should have the power as far as how the business is run. Does that view mean you want people to be poor, minorities to be taken advantage of or does it just mean, in principle, you believe that the business owner should be able to run his business as he pleases?
I don't think most Republicans want fully unregulated capitalism. Again, it's really a matter of degrees of regulation.
I think you're slicing things too thinly here. There is no real difference between "I want business owners to exploit employees" and "I think a business owner should be able to run his business as he pleases, including by exploiting his employees."

And the last part is right, but not in the way you think (IMO). Conservatives don't want no regulation - they do want regulations that protect them and the things they own and care about. They just don't want any regulation that obstructs or inconveniences them in any way. To a conservative, a regulation that personally helps them is good, while a regulation that personally hurts them is bad.
 
I think you're slicing things too thinly here. There is no real difference between "I want business owners to exploit employees" and "I think a business owner should be able to run his business as he pleases, including by exploiting his employees."

And the last part is right, but not in the way you think (IMO). Conservatives don't want no regulation - they do want regulations that protect them and the things they own and care about. They just don't want any regulation that obstructs or inconveniences them in any way. To a conservative, a regulation that personally helps them is good, while a regulation that personally hurts them is bad.
But you are still equating a belief that the owner can run his company as being the same as supporting the owner exploiting employees, which I really don't understand because, again, the employer/employee relationship is voluntary on both sides. Nobody is forced to hire you and you aren't forced to work somewhere.
 
But you are still equating a belief that the owner can run his company as being the same as supporting the owner exploiting employees, which I really don't understand because, again, the employer/employee relationship is voluntary on both sides. Nobody is forced to hire you and you aren't forced to work somewhere.
Now you're arguing against public accommodations laws and anti-discrimination laws. Jim Crow wants its bullshit back.
 


This is one of the primary things I had in mind when posing my original questions in the OP. I cannot wrap my mind around how the Party of Reagan has become the Party of Putin. That, more so than anything else, stuns me.

I'll give you that one. As you know, I've been predicting something like the rise of MAGA for 20 years. The writing was on the wall during W's term. The Tea Party movement made it inevitable.

But I didn't foresee kowtowing to Russia.
 
Now you're arguing against public accommodations laws and anti-discrimination laws. Jim Crow wants its bullshit back.
Nope. I'm not saying government should have no authority over how businesses are run. I am saying that supporting something based on principle isn't the same as supporting or intending to cause negative consequences. I absolutely support gun rights. That doesn't mean I intend for people to be wrongly killed, yet that is precisely how it's often portrayed by Democrats. It's the same as the game Republicans play with abortion and anyone supporting it being a baby killer.

It's the inability to stop demonizing, as you just did with me, as Hillary and Biden certainly seemed to do with Trump voters, that is why our national conversations are breaking down and the political divide is growing.
 
I think the modern Republican Party has taken the path it has largely due to the confluence of 3 main inputs (in no particular order)...

1) Globalization, and the resulting economic & cultural disruption, has harmed the rural and semi-rural areas that the largest part of Republicans tend to live in. A lot of jobs have been lost and, in doing so, a lot of ability for those rural areas to retain people have been lost. Another big part of the issue in these communities is that those left behind simply don't have the same standard of living they had before and they greatly fear losing the standard of living they currently have. A loft of folks are upset that younger folks don't have a great economic future in their small towns and therefore choose to leave to go where greater opportunities are. Additionally, globalization and its effects have brought folks into these rural communities who were not there even 20 years ago, often people of color, which have changed the way these communities see themselves. And so for many in these communities, they are very, very upset about both the economic and cultural changes that globalization has brought to their communities and they have chosen to both lash out at those they believe to be responsible for those changes and to take any steps they can to ensure that the remaining "economic pie" in their area goes to those like them and not folks they see as "others".

2) Demographic change has also been a significant input into the Republican push away from conservatism and toward authoritarian fascism. What Republicans see is a number of demographic changes to our country, all of which either scare them or which don't benefit them politically (or both).

- Urban areas continue to grow in both numbers and power, while rural areas experience "brain drain" and loss of power.
- The country is increasingly becoming one of racial/ethnic diversity. (Although Pubs have made a good run at Hispanic/Latinx folks over the last few years.)
- Women are increasingly taking hold of leadership positions, great and small, and are increasingly free of traditional gender restraints.
- Increasingly, minority groups who used to be content to hide themselves/remain on the margins of society are pushing for equality and a greater place of acknowledgment in and by society.

What Republicans have taken from this that their opportunities to both remain in power and/or use the power they obtain to keep a "traditional" society intact has and is greatly weakening. A pivotal event in this process for Republicans was Obama's election in 2008. Beyond electing on person of color to the presidency, the overwhelming nature of Democratic gains in Congress was a kind of shock to Republicans that let them know that without a major change that the long-term prognosis for their party and their desired America was not good. It lit a fire under a lot of Republicans, both leadership and, more importantly, proto-MAGA party members.

3) Republicans have been radicalized for the last 40-ish years and we're seeing the long-term fruits of those efforts. Republicans have been taught by right-wing media and, increasingly, by actual Republican politicians that Democrats aren't just folks with whom they have disagreements, they are the enemy. That policy differences aren't merely differences in opinions, goals, or perspectives, but that they will lead to the end of our country or society. That there is no way that Republicans can co-exist with non-Republicans because the differences are too great, that the only potential outcomes are either Republicans win and the country is "saved" or that Republicans lose and the country is "lost". And once a significantly large group of folks view the world in this black-or-white, right-vs-wrong manner, then there is no limit to what is not only acceptable but beneficial to ensure that the terrible things promised if "the others" should win does not happen. This is radical extremism no different than that which undergirds terrorism or revolutions. (Of course, the ironic thing is that in becoming such a radical body, Republicans have made themselves into the very type of extremist group that justifies the rhetoric being applied to them that they used against their opponents without actual reason.)

The combination of these 3 factors led Republicans into leaving conservatism behind and morphing into a body largely taken with authoritarian fascism. Their desire to preserve traditional hierarchies, norms, and social orders - when faced with forces that threatened to provide support for different priorities and outcomes - led them to reject full democracy, small government ideas, and even the rule of law for the raw power to attempt to preserve the social order and their place in it.
 
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