"They didn't stand up to Trump" makes it sound like Trump is something that happened to them.

No. They welcomed Trump with open arms. They bent over backwards to defend Trump.

They changed their entire identity to become all about Trump.

When Trump cozied up to Russia, they started loving Russia.

When Trump tried to overthrow the election, they stormed the capital for him, and protected him from impeachment.

They are all as culpable as Trump.

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.

-Lindsey Graham

Titles like this make it seem like Trump is the problem but he’s not, he’s a symptom. No fully functioning, rational party would have someone like Trump as a serious contender for POTUS.

The GOP has been on this path for decade's now going back at least as far as Nixon. We’re honestly lucky they picked someone as lazy and dimwitted as Trump; if they’d picked someone just as morally bankrupt and corrupt but with actual intelligence and cunning we’d already be living in a dictatorship.

We might still end up there but the sheer stupidity of the GOP and its leadership is giving us a second chance to reclaim our country before it’s too late. Vote in every election you’re eligible for from your state on down to you local county; they all count!

People. Voted. For. Trump.

You can try to blame the leadership all you like but fact of the matter is that 30-40ish percent of Americans like the guy and voted for him.

And they are voting for people like him down ballot as well.

Trump is the symptom. We'll be dealing with this shit when he's dead.

As someone who lived through the 90s, none of this is surprising. Starting with AM radio, they've courted people in the vast emptiness between cities because that's where the cheapest political power exists in America. In the 90s it was the "Religious Right" In the 00's and 10's it was "The Tea Party." Past that you've got the various alt-right groups like Qanon.

I'm reminded of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, where the apprentice creates a bunch of automatons to carry water for him and is almost drowned by it. Except the wizard is Mitch fucking McConnell.

Grifter. And y'all ate it up. What a fuckin mess.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Such a scene would have been unthinkable two decades ago when Republicans were effective at wielding power and pushing through laws relating to everything from foreign wars and domestic surveillance programmes to Medicare and the No Child Left Behind schools policy.

Republicans at the time such as Tara Setmayer, a former communications director who worked on Capitol Hill for seven years, believed the party needed to reach young voters, women and minorities to survive.

Critics say Gaetz is taking advantage of an era in which, instead of working their way up the ranks one committee at a time, politicians can build their brand, “go viral” and raise money by flaunting their extremism in the rightwing media ecosystem.

Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review magazine, wrote: “Republican backbenchers used to be people such as Jack Kemp and Paul Ryan, who became something by promoting ideas that they carefully developed, sincerely believed, and persuaded their colleagues to embrace.

Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the judiciary committee chairman, are the two leading candidates to succeed McCarthy and frantically chasing endorsements ahead of a vote among Republicans expected on Tuesday.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “We now see [that] the kind of authoritarian populism that talks about taking control, bringing order and strongman rule is an utter fiction.

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