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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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politics
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His 2016 campaign was initially seen as a joke (Even by Trump, who just wanted to use it to launch his next grift anyway). It essentially became a meme that quickly spiraled out of control. People voted for Trump "for teh lulz" early on, the same way they voted for the 15 year old kid, "Deez Nuts", and other joke candidates. The problem is that unlike those other joke cases, Trump didn't go away once the joke was over. He started winning.
He started ramping up the bigotry and racism, and just started spewing out what people wanted to hear. And then when the racists and bigots realized that "one of them" actually had a non-zero chance of winning the primary, they started jumping on board. Then you add in a whole bunch of people who liked everything he was saying but hadn't yet learned that he had no way of actually delivering on his promises, and suddenly you've got the "everyman". The man who's going to "tell it like it is". And he got away with it because nobody had ever peeked behind the curtain, and there was no appetite to do so so long as this man continued telling them what they wanted to hear.
Even beyond the dedicated MAGA base, he has been very successful in finding a boogeyman to point to to get even moderate Republicans to begrudgingly support him. If it's not those dirty Mexicans coming up here to take your job away, it's kids who want to pretend to be the opposite sex so they can enter the girls' bathroom and molest your daughter. Or its about a woman who actually has the audacity to want to murder their baby without at least getting the blessing of their local politicians (remember Dr. Oz?) first. Or the gays that are using rainbows to recruit your children. Whatever it is. But Trump knows that if you give a man a "them" to blame for all of his troubles, he'll follow you anywhere. And Trump is a master of blaming everyone else.
Having exposed exactly how many racists and bigots are in this country, he was able to start threatening the rest of the party into submission by (correctly) pointing out that those racists and bigots now dictate their political careers and that their choices are to either march in lockstep behind him or commit political suicide. Most chose to either get on board or retire. The rest saw the end of their careers in Congress.