We would like to think it all started with the Tea Party, but in fact, there have always been crazies out there on the political fringes. However, things have certainly changed. And the GOP has taken note and changed right along with them. No longer is the party of Lincoln noted for family values, backing law enforcement, and conservatism. Today’s GOP has taken pretty much all of Donald Trump’s cues and responded favorably. Now the GOP supports things like QAnon, Nazis, and the madness of favoring diseases over their remedies. No longer is this the party of inclusiveness. It has become the party of the fringe element. The GOP knows this is the group they can count on. This is the identified cluster who are easily duped and easily led in whatever direction the party deems relevant and important to winning an election. It is as if they think this group of anti-science and anti-democracy lackeys is large enough to carry the day. And the true danger is that they might be right about this.
Actual conservatives are aghast at where the party has gone. Actual conservatives are not even being courted anymore. They are being shunned. If the movers and shakers in that caucus could get away with it, they would drum Kinzinger and Cheney out of the party altogether. Courting conservatives? Nah, we’ll stick with the nut-case base. Those two troublemakers can go, but we’ll stick with Bobert, Hawley, Taylor-Green, and Gaetz who are just fine with the Kevin McCarthys of this Congress.
We have just speculated that they might actually be right in sticking with Trump’s pathetic base. The “very fine people” Nazis are fully behind them. The Q-tips who are murdering their own children at the behest of Q, are with them all the way. Not that it could ever wind up being good for the party, but it could win maybe one more election. For that to happen, they need to increase voter apathy in everyone not a right-wing lunatic. With voter fraud lies and fake re-counts they are trying to do that. They would need to limit democrats’ voting rights. With new voter restriction laws they are trying very hard to do that. They would need to redistrict in key states where fair elections would make democrats the winners. They are doing that. They would need to convince at least some actual conservatives and religious fanatics to continue voting red. With Supreme Court appointments, they may have accomplished that. All this, and then motivate the heck out of the lunatic fringe, and they stand half a chance of success. Whipping them up into a lather over all sorts of fake issues appears to be accomplishing that. The loonies seem to be very, very motivated. So much so, that the intelligence community is currently mulling the possibility of putting the heavy fence back up at the Capitol.
Right-wing media are pushing every conspiracy theory imaginable and many that go beyond even imagination. It has recently been determined that right-wing media are about four times more egregious in misinformation than left-identified media sources. A study claims about 10% of left-leaning information is tainted with misinformation. On the right, it is 40%. While that is disturbing in its own right, it is also indicative of the more challenging fact that our democracy is at risk if the current trends toward favoring disinformation increase. Folks on the right are actually shopping for sources that misinform and coincide with radical opinionated falsehoods. Rather than securing information, reinforcing the lies has become the objective.
The radical right has moved so far to the right as to court fascism. And where did they get this idea? Yep. Donald J. Trump, the wannabe fascist. An Internet meme comes to mind here: It’s a photo of Trump, and the caption reads, “Donald Trump may not be a Nazi, but the Nazis think he is.” The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has become the party of Trump. What a disgusting development. And the very real problem that pervades our politics today has seemingly been reduced to a single question. It is whether today’s nut-case base is really big enough to do this to us one more time?