Republican Party



How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. … [I]t had always been about power. The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. We oppose teaching of Higher order Thinking Skills [because they] have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental control. The Republican Party (sometimes colloquially referred to both seriously and sarcastically as the "Grand Old Party") is — as of 2023 — one of the two major political parties in the United States. The party comprises several small, unofficial, and highly factionalized "sub-parties" with drastically different beliefs with a practically nonexistent partisan organization, all of which just so happen to (superficially, at least) maintain the illusion that they are a collective when, in reality, they are disjointed cliques and cabals who only have in common the fact that they all personally consider themselves to be "conservative" to some degree. With the rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election, this illusion of unity suffered damage, as not all of the GOP's cliques supported Trump as the nominee.

The Modern GOP can be summed up as a right-wing conservative big tent party. Still, 'moderate' neo-conservatives or liberal conservatives are not absent, but in recent years, right to far-right national conservatism and American nationalism have become stronger across the party. Since the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as POTUS, the party had been slowly descending into a complete embrace of anti-science and anti-intellectualism,  which has culminated in the anti-fact, fake news-dependent presidency of Trump.

While there are various wings in the party characterized by different ideological viewpoints, some of which are a little less nonsensical than others, the most vocal "Republicans" these days tend to be a disturbing cultish mix of right-wing populists, reactionary assholes, the psychotically religious, and, of course, white nationalists. There is an increasingly small center-right section representing moderate conservatives who generally happen to be the hawkish type, libertarian-leaning folk, and the tiny remnant of what used to be the establishment. That last faction generally includes those remnants of the establishment back when Ronald Reagan (RIP) was in office who have not fled over to the Democrats. Most of them, especially the last ones mentioned, are extremely confused, still pondering where in Lincoln's name it went all wrong. At the same time, the "normies" and the truly far-right vilify them as being "not true conservatives", or RINO for short. This wing had shrunk to almost nothing from when the New Right assumed direct control, causing the New Left to fall to the Third Way, causing a mass migration of moderates to the now-centrist wings of the Democrats, and culminating in the rise of the neoconservatives, the Tea Party, crypto-racist Trumpists, and the blatantly racist Alt-right faction, which, at this point, is probably close to getting a candidate of their own into Congress. (Oh wait!) Their slogan is "The party of Lincoln!", closely followed by "The South Will Rise Again!" in many, many cases. To put it simply, the Republican "Party" is an extremely complex and convoluted concept and notion for one to fully grasp, so we will do the best we can.

The decline of the moderate Republicans — the G. O. Party in itself had pretty much always been a party of moderates — began with the Barry Goldwater insurgency of the 1960s, then slowly accelerated during the aftermath of the 1972-onwards Watergate scandal. This continued throughout the boom of the tax protest movement and the "Reagan Revolution", even though, by today's standards, Reagan's policies would be more comparable to those of the centrist ex-Republican Hillary Clinton.

Even so, Reagan was one of many factors in leading the Party to its current wingnut state, even if he was not one himself. This particularly had to do with his bringing into the party the Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, who had once supported Jimmy Carter (President of the United States from 1977 to 1981) but who became disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Yet another Ronnie blunder. Either way, that caused the GOP as a whole to shift to the right at a far greater pace than the Democrats have moved to the left, and many of those centrist Reaganites and Rockefeller Republicans switched parties due to the more centrist policies of the Democrat Bill Clinton (President of the United States from 1993 to 2001). The final nail in the coffin came when Dubya, who was highly neoconservative, became President (2001). While many neocons like McCain remained with the party, the Republican Party, after McCain lost the 2008 U.S. presidential election, had completed its full transformation into the mess that it is today. Voteview and its sister sites have the statistics to back this up going back decades. Speaking of statistics, Republicans lie three times more often than Democrats.

The old-style republicans (small "r") have become radical leftists without even trying (i.e. they're apparently trying to kill all white people because they think racism is bad). Express any kind of socially progressive idea, and suddenly you've got your penis stuck in Karl Marx's beard. Some argue that moderate Republicans still exist and are waiting for a suitable figure to lead them. If so, it is hard to tell them from the faux-rebels running around.

The sane and the crazy
There isn't much sanity left. There was once a moderate, center-right faction that could actually comprehend freedom of religion and how having sanity doesn't make you a pinko commie; they're the remnants of the Eisenhower Era, and the public figure closest to this is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is not the Republican Party at large anymore. Since at least the 1980s, if not even earlier with the Southern Strategy, the "teh evul leebrals and illeegull alienz r destroyin' Murica oh noes #MAGA" faction has come to dominate the party. As of late 2021, the party mostly consists of the more fanatical elements of the neoconservative Reagan-style Religious Right, a strong neo-fascist Alt-Right movement that inexplicably centers around the worship of Donald Trump, and a few libertarian donors who are happy to pull the strings of Republican politicians to get a lower tax bill (deficit be damned these days, of course). Even factions of the party that were merely somewhat insane, such as the Palin-style paleolibertarian Tea Party, have effectively been purged.

Below is a list of ideological factions and general types of Republicans in recent history, from most moderate, by Republican standards, to the most racist wingnuts ever to exist in American history (of which is the focus of the article). Despite this historical range of views for Republicans, by 2022 Republicans as a whole have become far more racist than Democrats. A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that on a 0-1 scale of structural racism Republicans had a score of 0.67 vs. 0.27 for Democrats.

Moderates
 * Actual Centrists
 * Fusionists
 * Libertarians (so now you know we've reached full hellworld when "I'd like government not to work" is the good-guy option)

Conservatives
 * Neocons
 * The Swamp (businessmen, lobbyists, and consultants)
 * Neoliberals (lawmakers whose policies explicitly empower corporations over workers)
 * "Independents" who always find ways to support the party
 * Religious Wingnuts

Far Right
 * The Tea Party (an amalgamation of the libertarian, evangelical, neoliberal, and paleoconservative wings, but with a stronger emphasis on conspiracy theories, racism, misogyny, and anarcho-capitalism, many of whom would later become part of the MAGA crowd. The election of Donald Trump and the resulting high-deficit Republican budgets effectively killed, and showed the hypocrisy, of this ostensibly austerity-focused movement).
 * Paleocons (who first found their voices in Pat Buchanan and later through Sarah Palin)

There be Dragons
 * Conspiracy theorists
 * Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters
 * Neoconfederates
 * The Alt-right
 * QAnon

Though the trend was clear well before then, since the election of Donald Trump, the more moderate factions of the party (by Republican standards, that is) have increasingly been squeezed out by crank factions driven primarily by Fox News style outrage, conspiracy theory, and a fanatical desire to.

No good deed, et cetera
Didn't the South use to be Democratic? The "Southern Strategy" is the short-form US History 101 exam answer to this question. Before the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964, major Democrat blocs came in two flavors:


 * 1) Dixiecrats and some Republicans associated with the Abolitionist movement
 * 2) Northeastern reformer-types, who we would understand as the modern Democratic Party

From 1940 onward, the Northeastern branch grew dominant, adding a pro-civil rights plank to the party platform and reversing its segregationist nature. So suddenly, you have this big clump of disgruntled southerners who feel abandoned by their party (whom they've been supporting for abstract reasons) and a GOP eager to snap up those votes by campaigning against the Civil Rights Act. Republicans have a very comprehensive platform to get those voters out, but they obviously have a ceiling in terms of popular votes.

Interestingly, before (and shortly following) the CRA, many Democratic Parties in the South, while agreeing on segregation, differed significantly on economic issues. You had radical leftists like Huey Long and arch-conservatives like John Rarick under the same tent, even within the same state (in this case, Louisiana). Also, there was a lot more diversity in primary elections. In Tennessee, for instance, Nashville tended to send more liberal Democrats to Congress (such as ) who were more receptive to civil rights, while outlying rural areas supported Blue Dog Democrats. The problem for Democrats is that the white half of their coalition either switched to the GOP, moved away, or died, leaving the crusty, black civil rights leaders in charge. The end result is that party affiliation is now overwhelmingly determined by race and locality.

The story of the last half-century (1968-2016) will be the tale of how the GOP systematically turned white working-class voters against the Democrats. First, it was the Southern Strategy with race, then the evangelical movement with abortion, and now it's blue-collar whites with nativist populism. Bringing the Southern Strategy up in a debate is pointless since they just dismiss it as darkie lies liberal propaganda.

Despite all this, Republicans continue trying to dine out on their distant origin as the anti-slavery party; many will, with a straight face, offer their and the Democratic Party's pre-CRA history as proof that the Democrats are the party of racism, not the Republicans.

War machine
Although the Cold War has ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia remains a fearsome military power. Meanwhile, there is some tension between the U.S. and Red China over economic and military matters. Some see a pivot East, and having China as a strategic partner against Russia is a sensible way forward. With so many parts of the world looking increasingly volatile, it is not a surprise that shares of defense companies went up 15% right after Trump secured the White House.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche
If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of providing abortions. As long as they aspire to do that, I’ll be after them.

Women make up just 9% of elected Republican members of Congress in 2016, which is down from 11% in 2006.

This is the most hypocritical thing about "conservatism" in the U.S. If you want to reduce abortions, comprehensive sex education and birth control is the way to go, as is addressing the social and economic factors that drive demand for abortion, such as providing maternity leave. Republicans have fought against all of these things, instead pushing "abstinence-only education" (which is a farce), banning birth control, and ratfucking Planned Parenthood. Don't forget their crusade to destroy the social safety net. (And then these retrocrat clowns will bleed public education so that those kids go to garbage schools, so they can claim public education is ineffective and continue the feedback loop.) Abstinence-only education and abortion restrictions are other examples of the state forcing people to either come to Jesus or suffer. (Or, more often, both.)

Megalophobia
The policies Republicans loathed were actually quite popular. So, to garner support for their attack on an activist government, they turned to a mythological narrative that drew on America’s long history of racism and sexism. They won voters not by convincing them of the merits of returning to a world in which businessmen ran the country, but rather by insisting that taxes redistributed wealth from hardworking white people to lazy minorities and feminists who wanted abortions on demand.

Republicans will say they want smaller government while insisting on abortion or marriage restrictions, a more extensive security state, and more military spending.

Welfare for me but not for thee
Republicans justify specific policies by claiming they want smaller government when they really just don't want money going to the wrong people. Reagan cut the top marginal rate by over 40% and made deductions far more generous while simultaneously increasing spending. He found the secret sauce the GOP needs to keep winning: Cut taxes, but don't cut back on services your voters use, thereby driving the government deeper into debt.

To put it another way, Republicans' last push to privatize Social Security and Medicare was one of the driving forces behind the 2006 midterms that flushed their majorities down the toilet. They'd be insane to go near that again, no matter how much the Boy Wonder from Wisconsin loves the idea.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many Republican congressmen took full advantage of the PPP “loans”, some to the tune of seven figures, highlighting once again that Republicans indeed love the government giving away free money, as long as it’s for them.

Thanks, Obama
A lot of us woke up every morning thinking about how to kick Obama, who could say the harshest thing about Obama on the air. We ended up where any hint of nuance or maturity just proved you were incapable of being the bull in the china shop that our voters wanted.

Half of Obama's policies were positions the Republicans loved, then suddenly hated as soon as Obama supported them. Obamacare is the obvious example, but Trump won promising to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. The $770b infrastructure program Obama passed (with only 1 GOP representative voting yes) had $330b in tax breaks and credits,

Although many laugh at how ridiculous the meme is,  Republicans are simply conditioning people to associate failure with Democrats. Every morning the headlines at Fox bleat about the awful things Democrats are doing. It works well in countries where education standards are low and freedom of thought is suppressed, and it worked to destroy Hillary Clinton's chances. So, quite reasonably, the GOP thinks there are a few more drives left in the old jalopy.

Penis envy
Supporting dictators like Putin, Assad, Duterte, and Kim is an important part of being a small government conservative. But Obama was the real tyrant for making us buy health insurance.

You may recall plenty of Republicans claiming that Obama wasn't strong enough in standing up to Russia during the Crimean incident and is a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. But that's a criticism of Obama being weak, not of Putin being strong. For a while, their stance has been that Putin is a strong ethno-nationalist and someone to look up to.

Trump's views on NATO and the UN are one of the most dangerous things about his presidency. The US isn't paying all this money as a charity; it buys global influence. Think of it like a rich vacationer passing everyone fifty-dollar tips for fetching a bottle of water or bringing fresh towels, so all the service people know that it's in their best interest to keep doing things that make him or her happy. If the U.S. doesn't fill that role, somebody else will, like, say, China. Indeed, there are signs this is already happening. Meanwhile, Trump will let Russia do whatever they want so long as Rosneft keeps sending his cut and his debts to Russian creditors don't come due. The word for this sort of caper is "corruption".

Live free or die
2016 shook everyone's faith that there's a correlation between economic well-being and voting patterns. There's clearly a correlation between perception of well-being and voting patterns, but that's a different thing.

Republicans refused to do their jobs for 8 years; they were rewarded with all three government branches. They didn't pay the price for shutting down the government, damaging the US credit rating with their debt limit stunts, the sequester, or refusing to pass any stimulative measures to help the economy. They certainly won't pay the price for raping the environment (a who gets a 92 rating from the American Conservative Union can be kicked out of his district for acknowledging AGW). Flint happened because the city basically told the EPA to eat shit and mind its own business after the EPA said they needed to test the water quality. Michigan was saved entirely by Democrats and the Obama administration, and it voted for the party that wanted to let their main industry go bankrupt. Tangible, local improvements in life don't matter in elections anymore.

Party of No
His insight was that the way you beat Obama is by grinding things to a halt, which would hurt the Democrats more because they were the party in the White House and the party of government, and because it would undermine Obama's whole comity shtick. Which paid off beyond McConnell's wildest dreams by now electing someone who fed off voter anger with Washington dysfunction.

Since 9/11, the parties controlling Congress have gradually pushed the envelope of obstructionism. When one party does it, that sets a precedent for the other party to do it, and they usually go beyond the precedent. So over time, obstructionism in Congress just gets worse and worse, and due to gerrymandered Congressional districts, 90% of Congressmen are more worried about their primaries than their general elections. Obstructionism is rewarded, compromise punished.

After 2000, the Bush-McCain wing of the party ballooned the national debt to its highest level in American history. Their successor, Barack Obama,(not a Republican) sought to clean up their mess by cutting the deficit by two-thirds. Since them, the GOP has done everything in its power to become known as the "Party of No":


 * Trade Adjustment Assistance to retrain workers displaced by free trade: blocked by Republicans.
 * Proposed free community college program: blocked by Republicans.
 * Infrastructure Bill, proposing $60b on highway, rail, transit and airport improvements + $10 billion in seed money for infrastructure bank: blocked by Republicans
 * Jobs Bill to "give tax breaks for companies that 'insource' jobs to the U.S. from overseas while eliminating tax deductions for companies that move jobs abroad": blocked by Republicans

Hence why they want to impeach anyone and everyone they disagree with. Just look at Obama and Hillary: They had a laundry list of "unconstitutional" or unlawful things the White House is doing, and every time the motion got shot down, they just moved on to the next item. It would not have been any different with Hillary; she would be constantly threatened with impeachment. It's really one of the few plays the Rs run.

Meanwhile, since Reagan's day, the American people have been told that the federal government can't fix the problem; the federal government is the problem, so they don't mind that their Congress is deadlocked and obstructionist. They don't see or understand how this cedes power to the Executive Branch. More and more decisions are being made by the President or the many unelected bureaucrats working under him/her.

Go home, Republicans, you're drunk
The outside groups don’t always move votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members. And so many of these [groups] now live in the conservative world of talk radio and Tea Party conventions and Fox News invitations. And so the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire. The members begin to believe they can achieve things in divided government that most objective observers would believe is impossible.

Republicans pander to the right in the presidential primaries. Democrats have to move to the middle. Why? One theory is that Republicans have too many groups in their tent and end up talking out of both sides of their mouths to appease begrudging constituent groups. This leads them to spend political capital on VP picks just to keep segments of their base from staying home.

The problem with these big tent parties in a two-party system is that they are unstable. It's so difficult to bring people together, and hate for the other is often the glue that binds them into a single unit. The alt-right is the hidden "4th leg" of the GOP stool. If the GOP cuts off that leg, will the party be able to stand? Nobody really knows.

What we're seeing today started as far back as the Reagan Republicans. They woke up, fought, and then went back to sleep. They rose up again in the nineties under Newt Gingrich and forced Bill Clinton to the center (he started out much farther to the left). Then they went back to sleep. They rose up again in 2008, "because of Obama" as Dems like to say, but as always, it was a backlash not against Democrats but moderate Republicans. They aren't going to sleep this time.

The rise of support for authoritarianism and Trumpism
The so-called Christian Right, for one, just have a different agenda. And I think big business is worried about them: the C.E.O.s don't want that kind of fascism [...] these Newt Gingrich-types might go too far and start cutting down the parts of the state system that are welfare for them—which of course is totally unacceptable.

They said I wasn’t born here. They said climate change is a hoax. They said that I was going to take everybody’s guns away [...] Donald Trump didn’t start it. He just did what he always did, which is slap his name on it, take credit for it, and promote it. That’s what he does.

Tea Party politics has always been proto-Trumpism: It's never been about small government so much as about populism and disdain for the Washington cabal.

The most logical place to mark the start of this particular "movement" is 2009 when the big money started moving to the Tea Party astroturf movement and Obama was doggedly trying to reform health insurance. But in actuality, conservatives have become more uncompromising because campaign finance laws keep getting weaker over the last several decades. Bachmann, Huckabee, Cruz, Cotton, Jindal, Santorum, etc., have been around for a while, and their right-wing pseudo-anarchist beliefs have become the norm. This is also a result of the GOP using the culture wars as political fodder: This time, Baptist voters weren't going to "fall in line" and vote for Jeb! or Rubio, and the GOP can't win without them.

The Democrats are disintegrating almost as fast as the GOP: their bases in Chicago, Seattle, and New York have finally turned on them, and the Bernie Sanders campaign was basically their worst nightmare. (There's also questionable voting practices in some red states.) The Republicans should be euphoric, but they're in a similar rut: a large part of their base is to the right of their leadership. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans have lost control of those people. The House/Congress has been a colossal disaster under the GOP majority: They managed to get rid of their own Speaker because he wasn't conservative enough and actually made deals with Democrats to force their own incumbents out.

Republicans have recently rebranded themselves as a "worker's party" to deal with the shift toward automation and foreign labor. It seems that the party lines are shifting to globalism vs. nationalism rather than just left vs. right; but with the Tea Party in Congress and Trump's cabinet of vultures, people are going to get more of the same. "Trump Republicans" or "Ryan Republicans", whatever: both groups are about massive tax cuts for the rich that will, magically, pay for themselves by generating laughably delusional economic growth rates.

There has always been an undercurrent of authoritarian behavior from Republicans beginning with, at the very least, Richard Nixon, who explicitly said, "…but when the President does it, that means it is not illegal…" This all came to a head under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who used the 9/11 attacks to expand executive power under the auspices of fighting terrorists, including authorizing torture in black sites and warrantless surveillance of citizens. Many state Republican parties have undertaken voter suppression, stopping votes from counting, gerrymandering, gutting the Voting Rights Act, stopping recounts (as seen under Bush v. Gore), and unprecedented obstruction while in power, to make sure government never works. It wouldn't take long before this decades-long fostering of anti-intellectualism, identification of enemies, and vicious demonization of their enemies would lead to something far worse brewing over the years. Donald Trump is the most extreme and eager expression of this brand of authoritarianism, as his own dictatorial impulses are paired up with overt racism, an incitement of violence, glorification of the whites-only good old days, vicious scapegoating of minority and oppressed communities, and a machismo cult of personality that has created a very American style of fascism that isn't going away anytime soon.

An analysis by international political scientists of support for authoritarianism within the two main US political parties from 1970-2018 found that opposition to authoritarianism among Democrats was high and unwavering during that period. The same study found that Republican opposition to authoritarianism was slightly lower but similar to Democrats from 1970 to the mid-1980s, but that support for authoritarianism steadily increased after that until the mid-2010s when it began a steep rise, culminating in the election of Trump. "This is a prime example of what political scientists call asymmetric polarization — a growing partisan gap driven almost entirely by the actions of the Republican Party." The turning point in the GOP rise in support for authoritarianism was likely the Tea Party movement, which began in earnest in 2009. The increased GOP support can also be found in two sub-indicators: increased demonization of the opposition and increased incitement of violence by GOP leadership (both beginning in the mid-2000s). Authoritarianism within the Republican Party will likely increase as time goes on. Notice how senator Mike Lee had an increase of support among Republicans despite tweeting in October 2020 that that the United States is "not a democracy" and that "democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are."

In October 2020 the V-Dem Institute reported that the Republican party has followed a similar trajectory to authotarian parties such as Viktor Orbán's Fidsez, Narendra Modi's BJP party and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP. While the Democratic party has changed little in its attachment to democratic norms and has has remained similar to centre-right and centre-left parties in western Europe.

Ties to Mammon
Despite their claims of being in the service of God, in recent times, the Republican Party has shown a stronger belief in Mammon, the personification or deity of greed in the Bible. Some within the GOP try to mask Jesus as one of them, altering his teachings to serve their political platform. A prime example of this would be one idiot and his "bible." Others are more open with their agendas, such as Sen. Even some right-wing ministers encourage deceit. The closest, thus far, of the GOP stating who they really pray to would be Glenn Beck encouraging his viewers to be greedy and leave their church if they talk about helping the poor (which he compared to Nazism). And these people believe they deserve a place in heaven.

The GOP's decision to gut the was assumed to be due to then-untold planned Republican mischief. Come 2021, they'd be proven right.

Timeline
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.

Republicans always seem to be one step ahead in the game. They blackened Bill, God-bothered Gore, capsized Kerry, obstructed Obama, and hacked Hillary. The only times the Democrats seem to get a break is when Republicans implode from hypocrisy or corruption, which quickly leads to scandal fatigue. The general evolution of social conservativism in the modern era is perhaps best summarized by former-conservative Damon Linker:


 * 1854 — The party is founded. (Contrary to its name, the GOP is in fact younger than the Democratic Party and not that grand either.) Times are very different from today, and people look to the Republican Party for favorable policies concerning slavery and trade as opposed to the Democratic Party, which, at the time, favored the interests of planter-slaveholders and the South.
 * 1860 — Abraham Lincoln, possibly the greatest president ever, is elected. He is remarkably bipartisan (has a Democrat for Vice President ) and agreeable, acting on what he feels is best for America rather than what is best for his party. He still managed to be the most divisive President in the country's history as his election was the single event that led to the Civil War after it had been brewing for years, if not decades. Unfortunately, he was not bipartisan enough to escape the ire of a particular Confederate sympathizer, who assassinated him on April 14, 1865.
 * 1868 — Ulysses S. Grant gets elected, and is arguably the first person to take the party in a clear fiscally conservative direction, having policies tough on inflation and focusing government resources to aid industry. Grant was much maligned later for being tough on the KKK and more enlightened on civil rights than many later presidents. Thus, the corruption during his administration gets played up for all it's worth.
 * 1870s — The, the RINOs of their day, opposed the mainline Stalwarts over civil service reform and ending the patronage system. The whole Reconstruction program is viewed by Democrats and Republicans alike as merely the most massive extension yet of the time-accepted spoils system. When President was assassinated in 1881 by a disgruntled election worker who felt Garfield owed him a job, the  was passed, ending the spoils system and political cronyism. Its implementation was the beginning of the Progressive Era; the Half-Breeds became the Progressive movement, which eventually became the Progressive Party.
 * 1896 — William McKinley battles his famous campaign with William Jennings Bryan, clearly setting the party positions of the pro-populist Democrats and pro-business Republicans for the next century. McKinley backs a strong gold standard, which his opponents cited as favoring debt-holders and banks. McKinley is supported by (and arguably elected because of) powerful interests such as Standard Oil and JP Morgan. His foreign policy also pursues a course of imperialism that included the annexation of Hawaii and naval war with Spain. While opposed by the Democrats, this policy is eventually followed by both parties post-WWI.
 * 1901 — Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt becomes president following the assassination of McKinley. He goes on to do many things that would be anathema to modern Republicans, including fighting big business and protecting the environment.
 * 1912 — The Republicans are split between the conservative William H. Taft and the progressive Roosevelt. When Taft's convention moves, TR leads an fracturing the Republican electorate. Roosevelt comes in second, and the Democrats take the White House.
 * 1920-1929 — pro-business Republicans retake the presidency and spend 9 years getting tangled up in scandals and presiding over a massive laissez-faire economic boom, which eventually fell over onto itself and led into... (Sound familiar?)
 * 1929 — The Great Depression starts. The Republican Party applies the "just watch the country go down the crapper" strategy. Contrary to what most people think, Herbert Hoover moves immediately into action, attempting a bailout and donating large amounts of his own funds to charity to keep people out of poverty. However, he explicitly tried to keep the government out of it, while the private charities he attempted to bolster failed to help people.
 * 1933 — Republicans coalesce against Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a Democrat), another candidate for the greatest president ever. Roosevelt greatly helps relieve unemployment during the Depression and has the luck of being in office when the U.S. is drawn into, and helps win, World War II. He brought many years of prosperity to America, along with hitherto unknown levels of national debt.
 * 1961 — Dwight D. Eisenhower finishes his two-term presidency. While infamous for introducing the "Under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as creating the "In God We Trust" motto, he was incredibly pragmatic, creating NASA, expanding Social Security, starting the desegregation process, and warning against a "military-industrial complex." He was also the last Republican president to balance the federal budget.
 * 1948-1968 — The segregationist Southern Democrats are abandoned by their increasingly tolerant party and gradually move to the increasingly conservative Republican Party. In 1964, the Deep South is the only region captured by Republican Barry Goldwater (aside from his home state). By the end of the decade, the once solidly Democratic South has turned red (although Southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton temporarily reverse the trend).
 * 1969-1974 — Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon is elected on a promise to end the Vietnam War. By the time of complete U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia, however, his "plumbers" were arrested for trying to bug the DNC offices in the Watergate complex, resulting in a cover-up so disgusting, and abuses of power so scary, that he had to resign or risk getting impeached. To his credit, though, he founded the EPA. Gerald Ford replaced him till 1976, when Democrat peanut farmer Jimmy Carter was elected President.
 * 1973 — Roe v. Wade ruling coupled with 1962 school prayer ruling and opposition to feminism and civil rights leads to a wave of defections from traditional Southern Democrats and the birth of the modern social conservative movement and religious right.
 * 1981-1989 — Ronald Reagan gets into office. At this point, the Republicans change from a center-right party to neoconservatism with the introduction of trickle down economics. Gets credit for delayed effects of the Soviet economy, delayed effects of previous presidents, and for being rude to other world leaders. Illegally sells weapons to Iran, which are used several years later by present-day extremists. Spends 1/4 of all military defense money allotted during the Cold War (in part by literally trying to build a space laser), and starts a 30-year trend of borrowing like a sailor without any regard for the consequences. Becomes principal deity to a new, cultish religion. Stops the horrible problem of 20-year-old adults drinking by signing the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1986, and vetoes a 1987 highway bill because it included 121 earmarks and was $10 billion over the line he had drawn in the sand.
 * 1994 — The Republican Party takes control of Congress due to complacency and corruption in the Democratic Party. Begins a fourteen-year era where the Republicans really screw things up and destroy any chance of power for dozens of years after a Democratic president and a new Democratic majority is elected in 2008. (It took the Democratic Party 61 years to become fat and lazy, and it only took the Republicans 14.) (At least in theory.)
 * 2000 — The Republican Party elects a monkey, chiefly due to Al "Doom and Gloom" Gore stealing votes that should rightfully have gone to Buchanan and Nader, and voter suppression in Florida. Republicans give way to big gub'ment ideas like increased defense spending, border control, and the worsening of the War on Drugs. Fiscal conservatism is put on the back burner. It's almost as if they actually want a big government, and all their bile about "small government" is just a ruse to defund all the programs they don't like...weird.
 * 2005 — Bush signs a $286.4 billion highway bill passed by a GOP-controlled Congress, earmarking $24 billion for 6,376 pet projects. What line? What sand?
 * 2007 — Bush presses for passage of John McCain's bill granting a path to citizenship for 20 million illegal immigrants. Only a grassroots effort by wingnuts who demand the border be locked down dials back the GOP drive for amnesty.
 * 2008 — As his presidency was winding down, Dubya issued a series of executive orders with nasty environmental consequences.
 * 2009 — Obama becomes president, and the next 8 years become an endless slog of fear-mongering and "whatever Obama wants, we don't!"
 * 2010 — The Republicans begin their massive campaign of smears, fear-mongering and misinformation against the Democrats. The Teabaggers are spawned. The Republicans become the "Party of No" as they try everything they can to block important or useful legislation proposed by the Democrats socialists  commies  cultural Marxists  sexual Bolsheviks leebrals. Unenthusiastic liberals stay home as angry conservatives turn out to elect enough scary people to Congress to take control of the House.
 * 2011 — Control of the House achieved, congressional Republicans relax and enjoy preventing Obama from making any progress by not passing anything for him to sign. The nation shrugs as attention is drawn to the trainwreck that is the 2012 presidential campaign.
 * 2012 — Mitt Romney becomes the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He loses the election to the incumbent, Barack Obama, with (in full irony) 47% of the vote.
 * 2013 — Despite humiliating losses in the 2012 elections (they only won the House of Representatives because the boundaries were rigged in their favor), the Republican Party is continuing to stake out far-right stances on the deficit as well as social issues like abortion and gun control. No major attempt is being made to reconcile with Hispanics or African-Americans after the 2012 debacle (with many establishment conservatives fearing they're going to get "primaried"), and it is increasingly doubtful if they can retake the presidency in 2016. Gun nuts, ancaps, and alt-righters have begun to take over the party and Republicans don't even realize it yet.


 * 2015 — Now in control of Congress, the Republicans help make America's chief legislative body into the single most anti-science institution in American history. This includes having Ted Cruz oversee NASA and James Inhofe, the War on Science chief, as chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. (Richard Nixon would be sickened right about now.) The Tea Party purges the last remaining "moderates", House Speaker included. Some conservative talking heads like Mark Levin are now decrying Fox as a liberal bastion and Reince Priebus as a secret liberal. This is one of the guys Cruz wants to moderate the GOP debates. Shit is bananas.
 * 2016 — The party abandons all pretenses of being "small-government conservatives" and give in completely to authoritarianism, social Darwinism, and Even by Republican standards, the crop of Presidential candidates doesn't have any substance to it at all. Their platform is Screw The Dems because that's all the base wants to hear. As in 2012, the debates never yield a thought-out position, just "I'll have the opposite of what he's having." Inexperienced young dude leaving? We need the most establishment family dynasty ever! Super-established former Secretary of State running? We need some new blood, someone from outside the Beltway who doesn't play by the rules! The fact that a troll candidate was at the top of the polls for months on end says it all about this murderers' row.
 * 2017 — The Democrats are a minority on all government levels, having been swept out in the national election. It seems like Republicans have been so disciplined the last four years that they'll be able to further cut taxes for the rich, gut financial regulations, weaken health insurance, and restrict immigration. However, their narrow Senate majority makes passing specific bills (such as Obamacare repeal) extremely difficult. At least most of their policies tangentially affect "the budget" and will therefore be eligible for reconciliation rules. They don't answer to the everyday pressures of "bringing home the bacon"; they answer to a kind of ideological wave rather than making deals. Right-wing populism is here to stay, at least for the moment. Things aren't all rosy for them, though; some well-known GOP strongholds in the House and Senate have been weakened, and Democrats were actually able to win seats in otherwise guaranteed Republican districts; Doug Jones versus Roy Moore for the senatorial seat from Alabama is a notable case. Finally, there's that whole possible foreign collusion not limited to Russia going on that brings a big question mark on the conflict of interest of the party, if not the eligibility of the president.
 * 2018 — Despite benefiting from massive gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the structural advantage of being a rural party, the GOP somehow lost control of the US House of Representatives in November 2018. The specific reasons for this loss remain up for debate, but it certainly has nothing to do with the Very Stable Genius who then-occupied the White House. It wasn't not all bad news for the GOP, though; Republicans did net two seats in the Senate, thanks to their unbelievable achievement of winning elections in North Dakota, Indiana, and Texas, though the Democrats weren't planning on fighting for those seats anyway, so the win isn't much to brag about. The GOP and Trump also partially shut down the government for 35 days, the longest ever in U.S. history, after Trump refused to sign any budget without $5 billion for his border wall. Get ready folks, this could go on for a while.
 * 2019 - The Mueller Report is released. It shows damning evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election and evidence of the Republican Party complacently accepting Russian interference (as the most charitable interpretation). It lays out at least 10 instances in which Donald Trump tried to obstruct justice. In August, an anonymous whistleblower presented phone recordings of Donald Trump asking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate alleged corruption on Joe Biden, which are severe allegations and lead to Trump's impeachment late in 2019.
 * 2020 - Where do we even begin? Donald Trump is impeached in late 2019 and early 2020 for attempting to elicit foreign interference from Ukraine to help him dig up dirt on his presumptive opposition in exchange for congressionally supplied military protection against Russia. While it's no secret that Trump is a very corrupt politician, and the evidence is damning, the vote in the Senate was still along party lines nonetheless (the only deviation being Mitt Romney), and Trump avoided conviction and removal from office. Polls before the election predict a shitstorm waiting to happen, almost consistently favoring Joe Biden in even bigger margins than they incorrectly did for Hillary in 2016 when she ran against Trump; polls from even traditionally Republican strongholds were too close for comfort, with Biden leading in some states. Also, the coronavirus is a thing, and the economy, whose strength Trump relies on far too much to try and keep his supporters, crashes, implodes, and burns up in a nuclear inferno visible from space (and economists had already predicted an eventual recession) in the worst downturn since the Great Depression, thanks partially to his complete botch job of "handling" the pandemic- as well as the decaying healthcare infrastructure Trump is only peeling more from. Meanwhile, Trump consistently downplays the risk the virus poses, continues to hold large campaign rallies amid the pandemic, sows doubt about science- and evidence-based ways to avoid infection by spreading dangerous misinformation that fact-checkers nationwide immediately scramble to correct, and publicly encourages his followers to oppose public health restrictions, such as tweeting that someone needs to "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" from a closure of non-essential businesses. Several Republican Congresspeople and state governors follow his lead, with results ranging from individual politicians further beclowning themselves to red states experiencing much higher COVID infection and death rates than the blue states that Trump pretends are in "anarchy" due to communist socialist BLM media antifas. In the 2020 Presidential election, Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the popular vote by a somewhat comfortable margin, and the Electoral College confirms his victory without a hitch. To the surprise of no one Trump, who has been telling his supporters for months that COVID is no big deal, injecting themselves with disinfectant cures it, and mail-in votes are insecure, decries the (widely expected) influx of Biden votes after mail-in ballots are counted as evidence of massive fraud; he then deploys a crack(pot) legal team to file dozens of lawsuits challenging the electoral results in various states to try and subvert the will of his own people (authoritarian much?)- nearly all of which (also unsurprisingly to anyone with half a brain) fail spectacularly. The Orange Snowflake, upon (privately) realizing this, promptly starts to scream at various Republicans he had once endorsed and stumped for as "beautiful, wonderful people" on Twitter with his caps-lock key as the process of confirming the votes moves further and further forward, in a manner akin to the bunker scene in the ever-parodied Der Untergang- all the while continuing to pretend that the election can still be stolen as a massive scam to siphon money off his supporters so he doesn't go to jail for tax evasion at the expense of people's respect for our democracy, further demonstrating how he doesn't care about his country or even what our future children will be taught about him in their history classes; only about his own instantaneous self-interests. The year ends with a feud between Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the size of COVID stimulus checks, and both Trump and the old turtle try to make one of the proposed bills all about the former, as if to further demonstrate their party's utter depravity these days.
 * 2021 - The GOP's year gets off to a rollicking start when Trump brags on Twitter about an election-related phone call with Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. Journalists at The Washington Post subsequently release audio of the hour-long call, in which Trump repeatedly pressures Raffensperger to "find" enough extra Trump votes in a recount to flip the state red. Days later, Democrats John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock narrowly prevail in runoff elections in Georgia, tying the Senate at 50-50 and meaning that upon her inauguration, Vice President Kamala Harris will cast tie-breaking votes, giving the Democrats control of the Senate for the first time since 2015 and control of the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since 2011. Sadly, on the same day, the fruit of Trump's conspiracy theory-mongering about the election comes ripe as thousands of Trump supporters storm the Capitol during the counting of Electoral College votes, invading the building and resulting in the Senate being evacuated. This horrified pretty much every decent person in the country (and plenty of indecent ones) and resulted in the introduction of articles of impeachment against Trump yet again, this time for incitement of insurrection. On the bright side, Trump's iron grip on the party seems to have loosened somewhat, with most congressional Republicans voting to certify the election for Biden, and a small but growing number of Republicans calling for his impeachment or resignation.
 * 2022 - what was supposed to be a comfortable red wave for Republicans became a historically catastrophic midterms for them. Sure, they end up taking the House, but only extremely narrowly. It may have to do with their Republicans' pet (arguably illegitimate) Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade motivated some seriously pissed off voters, especially younger ones, who were probably already weary of the dreadful Trump circus. Do the Republicans use their newly gained House for helping Americans? Of course not, are you crazy?

Comparison to other right-leaning political parties
Not only in the United States but also in other democratic countries, there are political parties with extreme right-wing elements, even though they are establishment conservative, not non-mainstream far-right populist parties.

For reference, the political environment of Japan, India, and South Korea has similarities with the United States. The biggest opposition of these extreme right-wing conservative parties is the indigenous left-liberal party, not the European-style social-democratic or democratic-socialist party:, and Minjoo Party of Korea. (In the case of the INC, it officially advocates a social democratic tradition, but is generally regarded as a liberal and centrist party.)

Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)


LDP is the Japanese version of the Republican Party. The LDP is also a mainstream conservative party similar to GOP, but far-rightists occupy a significant stake in the party. And like the GOP, it is debatable if the LDP are a center-right party anymore, as opposed to being far-right. They also gain popularity in the polls for their aggressive rhetoric and actions against Koreans, as opposed to the Western far right's obsessive hatred of Muslims.

The Nippon Kaigi, the biggest supporter of the party, is similar to the Tea Party movement, and the Netto-uyoku, the militant wing of the movement, are a major parallel to the alt-right. The current Japanese Prime Minister, who is considered a RELATIVE moderate within the Japanese conservative camp, is also a member of the Nippon Kaigi.

People Power Party (South Korea)


PPP is the South Korean version of the Republican Party. They are notorious for defending the military dictatorship of the period. Moreover, like the GOP the PPP are extremely homophobic, transphobic, and antifeminist.

Just as the GOP represents the interests of Wall Street, and not the people, the PPP represents the interests of, not the people.

Bharatiya Janata Party (India)


BJP is the Indian version of the Republican Party. They are also India's mainstream conservative party, but they focus on far-right Hindu fundamentalism, including Hindutva, and show a tendency to right-wing populism.