111 Comments
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

This is deliciously petty and true at the same time. Just because the Cheneys are endorsing Kamala Harris doesn’t erase their past sins fucking up the country in the service of the Heritage Society and Rupert Murdoch.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Fascism has never gone out of style for the GOP, they were just hiding it under a cloak of “respectability” and faux patriotism. That facade has been ripped away and lies in tatters. Vote Blue 💙

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Yes! Absolutely! Reagan was a hideous, ugly man, just as bad as tRump, hidden under an avuncular, kind-appearing smile. You just have to watch Nancy in those clips; she was terrified of him.

The Orange Malignancy is just the face, and my biggest piece of evidence is that the Republikkkans didn't pull him when they had the chance.

I believe it's been their plan, in the past year or so, to get him elected, then pull him after a few months via the 25th Amendment. He's obviously befuddled and the smarter among them understand what that means. He couldn't run the country when he was moderately "there;" he certainly can't run it now.

The Right-wing extremists are fully in charge and they know what they're carrying. Their only problem is how to deal with him.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

The fact that the "Never Trump" coalition (cough- The Bulwark -cough) harkens back to Saint Ronnie and overlook the through-line from the Birchers thru Goldwater/Nixon/Reagan and the Bushes is telling. This was always the Republican manna from heaven, they just want to paper over the incongruencies and massive red flags that their patron Saint committed during his terms.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Carlyle, What you summarize as their “plan” makes a lot of sense. If the orange anus and couchfucker are elected they’ll have a man who is a true proponent of 2025 in office and a Big Mac away from taking over and putting 2025 in effect, all 900+ pages of it. They’ve perfected how to use someone and then toss them aside. A terrifying master plan to say the least. Another reason to rid the American political system of those two as if we had to have another reason.

Expand full comment

Another reason, if you needed it, to vote Blue down to dogcatcher. ESPECIALLY FOR DEM SENATORS & HOUSE , DC & your STATEHOUSE!

Expand full comment

I always thought it was just the opposite. Reagan was terrified of Nancy. She controlled his life. Had their horoscopes done monthly, all the pills. No religion of course. That was all a facadé.

Expand full comment

Yes, he was out to lunch by then, she was known to be mostly keeping things together by his second term.

Expand full comment

I firmly agree with your theory of their plan. I have written that in these comment sections several times. The Old Republikkkan “leaders” discovered too late that his fan club of the common folk wouldn’t tolerate them trying to remove him, so they’re stuck with him until he gets elected (he won’t) & then they can get their Project 2025 shit going to seize ALL the power, then they can A25 him or pay him off with cash & a pardon to retire “due to health reasons.”

That’s exactly why Thiel, et al pushed for him to pick Vance, the young Christian Nationalist woman-hater, who owes everything he is to

Thiel.

Expand full comment

Looks like they are trying to take another shot at hm again, literally.

Expand full comment

It appears the way they are now choosing to deal with this turd they hatched in their bed is to have their pundits ‘explain’ how he’ll lose the election because of his performance at the debate. That way their MAGit cum DixieCrat spawn are more likely to shoot the messengers than the ones wishing to abandon him now.

Expand full comment

Excellent!! As someone who grew up in the bigoted south with a racist father I love the stand for the real truth grit in this piece. Thank you!!

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Isn’t Justin WONDERFUL?!?!

Expand full comment
author

You're making me blush. :)

Expand full comment

It is justly earned, you summed it up with clinical precision.

Expand full comment

True. My dad (now deceased) was a confused racist. He talked about "the colored" & voted for Goldwater. Early 1960s. One day my dad came home in a 1949 pick-up. He and a Black man he worked with had stumbled into my dad buying the Black man's truck he wanted to sell. My dad would speak in a not-heard-before tone of absolute wonder. "Why, he's just like everyone else!". They began to eat lunch together often. Dad was born & raised in NB, and very few Blacks in Vegas back then. It bugged me (2nd grade) that he still pretty much "spit out" the word "colored", but didn't make the connection to the new Black friend at work.

.

Expand full comment

Reagan’s smile was in fact a sinister mask, he was an evil man who destroyed the best of America, helped by that hateful wife of his. That party is so corrupt it’s like a bag full of decaying and fermenting worms.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

They bent over willingly for him, and not just backwards.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Vampires can only come into your house if you invite them in.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Looks like we did.

Americans are apparently" like that" and not "better than this."

Expand full comment

OMG...I finally get it. Thank you! (Seriously)

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

God damn, that felt good to read!

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

OH so true!!

Expand full comment

Awesome read

Expand full comment

In my wildest fantasies, I pretend that this will be a wake-up call for the GOP that they've gone too far and need to course correct back towards sanity. But I know better than to believe they will come true. 😮‍💨

Expand full comment
author

If January 6th was not a line crossed, nothing is.

Expand full comment

The toothpaste will not go back into the tube once its out.

Expand full comment

Yeah, I'm in deep red No. Calif. My very small town is surrounded in most directions of turd flags. Now they've come out in force & made that bond stronger.

Expand full comment
Sep 13Liked by Justin Rosario

Fabulous post here today. This should be required reading. Funny how today (yesterday?) MTG (MTG!) thought Laura Loomer was a bridge too far. There’s no bridge too far for these creeps.

Andy Borowitz wrote a book about how the GOP evolved. Chapters on Reagan, Bush, Quayle, Palin (I’m sure I’ve forgotten some)

Quick but very good read.

Thanks for today’s post Justin.

Here’s a link to Borowitz’s book:

https://www.amazon.com/Profiles-Ignorance-Americas-Politicians-Dumber/dp/1668003899/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=HNG16ZVDC0J&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qNhFeYzlCftqXtJGWRMEQVGUqcmsWhe-heuJwJuTODTVYO70ECTn4KwoTpJZXAjZOC6-s6_hUkFlH12N_oSfgaDrn4t7BM3PyZh2c5ZnTfIOiaoNWznFdLFB6pfNKhPb.0vKwaHy1Yh-hslRr_3ouezrdDXOQw58AmHw0ViyyMx4&dib_tag=se&keywords=andy+borowitz+profiles+in+ignorance&qid=1726245322&sprefix=andy+borowitz%2Caps%2C295&sr=8-1

Expand full comment

Probably maggotgreen, lalakari, puppyloverkristi and others see each other as competition for 4?

Expand full comment

True words ! Republicans suck and always have 👍

Expand full comment

I enjoyed your article, but as a historian I disagree with the broadstroke of this comment: the Republican Party has been a breeding ground for fascists and monsters for a century. In 1924, though the Republican Party had elected more conservative politicians, like Warren G. Harding (1920), Calvin Coolidge (1924), and Herbert Hoover (1928), it was not yet the facists promoting party it is aspiring to become (I say this because the Republican Party still had Progressive liberals, moderates, and a harder right.). Progressive liberals eventually joined the Democratic Party during the New Deal. When Jerald Ford took over the office of President of the United States when Nixon resigned in disgrace, he chose Nelson Rockerfeller as his vice president. Rockerfeller came from the liberal wing of the Republican Party. THrough the 1950s, many African Americans supported the Republican Party. Eisenhower, a moderate, enforced efforts to desegregate schools, built the national highway system, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Strom Thurman of South Carolina filibustered by speaking for over 24 hours was a Democrat. He and many of his conservative colleagues in the Democratic Party swithched to the Republican Party in 1964 and after. Why? The Democrats under President Johnson's leadership championed civil rights by signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (If it had not been for Vietnam, Johnson would have won reelection against Nixon and been remembered as a great president). At that point conservatives in the Republican Party began a decades long purge of the liberal wing of their party. Moderates were next, leaving Reagan conservatives and fascist reactionaries, who are at war now over control of the party.

The history of political partied have always been complex going back to Hamilton's Federalist and Jefferson's Democrat-Republicans. Using broadstoke statements only inflame. I perfer looking at the nuances of history. The rest of your article I agreed with 100 percent just as I agree with Carlye Hooten's opinion in the comments section.

Expand full comment

Excellent analysis, Karen. The rise of the DixieCrats made possible by the elites who created the Heritage Foundation and made Reagan the spokesperson which Goldwater, George Wallace, and Nixon were never ‘polished’ enough actors to be.

Expand full comment

Yes, Republicans began appealing to racists and bigots in the 1960s, sometimes subtly, and sometimes not-so-subtly.

Expand full comment

Justin is correct. The GOP has been a front for fascism for at least a century. Sure, not every member knew what their party was, just as so many vehemently deny it today, but it’s been the party’s underlying principle for longer than most of us here today have been alive. The so-called progressive liberal and moderate members were the tools used to give the party a patina, but patina only, of respectability. Even Eisenhower failed to stand up to the red-baiting McCarthy because it was not, ahem, convenient (so much for principles). LBJ might have beat Nixon if, you know, he had decided to run, but he was not a candidate in 1968. With respect, you’re failing to see the big picture of the history of the GOP/the right in general. There are reasons conservatives believe the things, and attract the voters, they do. (Your post is also rife with several misspellings, including the names of the main players to which you refer. A couple of typos here and there are to be expected given the medium, but the lack of attention to detail in a post that seeks to be taken seriously undercuts it.)

Expand full comment

“ The GOP is not a prisoner of Trump. The Republican Party created him and then he killed the Republican Party. In November, Trump will lose and the GOP, long dead, will finally begin to decay.”

Amen

Expand full comment

The problem with castigating the never-trumpers most severely is that *they* were also caught by surprise by the turn that *the voters* made. Maybe save your most vitriolic bile for those republicans who are *still* with trump — Graham, McConnell, Rubio, Cotton, Crenshaw, Abbott, Paxton, DeSantis, etc. etc.

Expand full comment

It’s important to cite T. Tuberville by name here. As he is the ‘architect’ who has long worked toward providing tRump with the “German generals” he’s always wanted.

Expand full comment

😊😊❤️❤️🤗🤗 Ogre, you are auwwesome!

I absolutely looove HCR, Applebaum and Tim Snyder, but you are so far the only person who appears to have read my mind. Your writing is clear, concise, meaningful. And very importantly, you don't have that grievance filled, whining tone I hear so often throughout "social media".

Thank you!!!!!!!

Oh, and to add to your article, whatever toxic colony of pathogens repugs have become, the Petri dish has always been the media, papers of record, and dead gray ladies.

(no need to respond 🙂)

Expand full comment

Every single R politician, operative, consultant or whatever insider role there may be knew full well that a significant portion of their voter base was unintelligent racist shitheads who were simply lacking the public validation of someone in leadership. The smarter (for lack of a better word) evil people behind Trump, like Bannon, knew this and put him in place to be that figurehead leader.

Fuck the GOP.

Expand full comment

Reagan invited the Evil evangelicals in with all his cuddling up to Anti-semitic Huckster Billy Graham, and Falwell's misnamed "moral majority" (as they were neither).

Expand full comment