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Comment by i80and | Hacker News Reader

I attended GOP caucuses circa 2010-2014. I would like to believe there was once a healthy sensible conservative party, but I'm sorry to say that to my eyes nothing has been hijacked: MAGA is what the Republican party has been for my entire adult life. It's just loud about it in public now instead of behind the doors of political machinery.

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There is a through line from Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan to Gingrich to Trump. Connective tissue has been provided by the likes of Roger Stone. This has been a 60-plus year project to overturn the New Deal.

Facts. All Trump did was take the top talking points of AM radio & fox (birtherism/racism, illegal immigration, and no factory jobs) and parroted them to power.

That's a fundamental shift in historical Republicanism though.

For most of its history, the Republican party was fairly anti-populist (defined by whatever populism was at the time).

The Republican southern strategy from 1980+ was predicated on attracting southern white votes by attacking civil rights (explicitly or implicitly), but ultimately focusing on business priorities (with some headline-catching red meat).

However, in the decades since, the explosion of hardline conservative talk radio then dragged the party to answer to its more egregious populist demands.

Hence Trump.

That bait-and-switch reveals the core, though. The R base wanted what Trump is doing all along but was tricked by the establishment business class. The reason they are so loyal to Trump is because he ripped away the fasaud and acts out their longstanding wishes.

I would argue that their opposition to civil rights was populist. It was amoral and intended only to get votes from racists, as an “ends justify the means” way to pursue deregulation and corporatism.

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