What the hell happened to the Republican party?

[MountAverage]

Please only respond if you've actually watched the video. It's only 8 minutes long, you can do it. If you disagree, then disagree with specific points made in the video.

So, what the hell happened to the Republican party? What do you think about the analysis in the video made about the gradual intellectual degradation of Republicans over the course of several decades?

Updates

+1 y

And please no whataboutisms.

[slatyb]

It's complicated. A lot of things happened to the current Republican voters leaving them angry and willing to listen to demagogues promising simple solutions. Here's a partial list:

1. Globalization, resulting in large job losses in manufacturing and the impoverishment of the rust belt. Fifty years ago a man could graduate high school and walk into a union job that paid a living wage, had a guaranteed pension plan, paid time off, and comprehensive medical insurance. He could buy a modest home, raise a family, and retire comfortably.

2. Automation, exacerbating #1, reducing the value of manual labor and increasing the value of intellectual work.

3. The "Great Sort" and the increase in mobilization, leading many to migrate from their home towns to the coastal cities. This had depopulated much of small town America. Once I was asked who lived in my home town. The answer: "old people". My HS graduating class was almost 600. Today they are graduating about 300.

4. Coincidental social change increasing the feeling of instability.

Listen carefully to Billy Joel's "Allentown". It's all in there.

Fearful people are vulnerable to demagogues who 1) blame their problems on some other group and 2) promise simple solutions.

[slatyb]

TL;DR: the impoverishment of the middle class

[RolandCuthbert]

Dude, the patients are running the insane asylum over there.

They are fielding a "Black" candidate in Georgia. . . that embodies every single negative "Black" male stereotype in existence. Violent, has several babies out of wedlock with several different women, a liar, dumb af, and doesn't have a clue about what is going on.

This is not your Daddy's republican party. That party is gone. The trumplican party has arrived.

[MountAverage]

I swear I can feel my brain cells dying when I listen to Herschel Walker speak.

[RolandCuthbert]

And he is running neck and neck with Warnock. All because "they want control of the senate". So the point is they never cared about integrity, experience, competence, values or principles.

It was all a lie.

[NewsReader]

He's being one-sided in this video. Republicans and Conservatives are open to discussions. Democrats and Liberals are not. The examples he provided show how some members speak to their own base. Liberals say outrageous stuff when talking to their own base. It goes both ways. The Democratic party is not the same as it was in the 60's and 70's. Both parties have drifted apart from each other which is why we see more powerful partisans becoming popular instead of the moderate ones. Why do biased news networks use emotional or sensational headlines? Because it draws greater attention from their base leading to more clicks which leads to greater advertising revenue. The media landscape has changed over the decades. And I'm sure you can find a similar video that shows the same changes in the Democratic party. You just have to do some research.

[MountAverage]

Aside the fact that what you said is pretty much the polar opposite of reality, you committed whataboutism. You're out.

[NewsReader]

You are so brainwashed you can't even accept a balanced explanation of how things have changed. Pathetic. Go back to your echo chamber.

[MountAverage]

Balanced explanations are cool, as long as they make sense and are based on reality. Not the case here.

But that's besides the point. I specifically asked to adress the points made in the video and to refrain from whataboutisms. You ignored both, therefore you're out. It was your decision. Buh-bye!

[goaded]

I think the video is spot on. Reagan also supported gun control as well as immigration and open borders.

[MountAverage]

The scariest thing about this development is how even progressive people like us now start viewing right-wing assholes like Reagan in a more positive light. Reagan's presidency was a disaster for the working class, but he seems like a normal kind of bad compared to today's standards. Even fucking Bush jr. seems normal compared to Trump, and he was the first president everybody made fun of for being dimwitted. But then Trump came and being dimwitted suddenly seemed not so bad, next to Trump's actual mental retardation.

[goaded]

[TroyDT2]

I'm sure you could go back and find durrs in the 1960s and 1970s and then show Thomas Sowell now and "prove" the opposite.

Actually the entire political system is dumbed down because of the microwave attention span of most people.

[MountAverage]

Nah.

[MountAverage]

But let me know if you're gonna answer the question :)

[imfreeze95]

I have no idea I consider myself a Goldwater Conservative or a Ron Paul Libertarian. This is not the Republican Party I grew up with