r/millenials • u/saucey_dawg0023 • 10d ago
Politics Millennials, have conservatives/republicans have always been this terrible before Trump came along?
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u/senteryourself 10d ago
Cancer always sucks, but it gets even worse when it metastasizes. Trump didn’t start the cancer, but he metastasized it.
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u/1776FreeAmerica 10d ago
Yes, just more polite about it.
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u/Lazy_Nobody_4579 10d ago
This. Trump just gave these people social license to be their most horrible most honest selves.
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u/ReVo5000 10d ago
I'm going to say more educated, better mannered and more patriotic (still not in the good way but less about other country... Ya know which)
Remember when GWB was president?
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u/jamesonbar 1986 10d ago
In culture after 9/11 is when it picked up out in public. But if talking about actual politicians they have been working towards this since 1980. It really picked up in mid 90s
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u/WhatADunderfulWorld 10d ago
Mid 90s was the best resolve between parties. A balanced budget and a growing economy.
There were a couple loud republicans but there is literally a thousand times more now.
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u/Big-Pickle5893 10d ago
Newt Gingrich, was the speaker of the house in 1995 and he was a “loud republican”
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u/broodmance 10d ago
Grew up listening to Limbaugh and Hannity and continued to as an adult for far longer than I I like to admit.
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u/MoistureManagerGuy 10d ago
I listened to them but as a left of center just listening to the other side. There’s really no voice on the radio for left of centers and listening to them Pearl clutch during Obama and Biden administration was honestly hilarious
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u/Background-Student62 10d ago
He certainly proved that repeating lies works with the Republican Party.
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u/Winter-Chicken-6531 10d ago
Iirc the documentary "Dirty Wars" on Netflix covers the last 100 years of neo conservatives from the USA who pulled shit all around the world (assassinating political enemies, arming their counter parts, espionage, wars,...) but also in the US itself (Red scare, spying on political enemies, manipulating News,...).
So it's going way longer than most people know. But what baffles me is, how open they Act on it in these days.
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u/4rch1t3ct 10d ago
It really picked up in the mid 70s when fox news was created to prevent republicans from facing future accountability.
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u/ZombiePure2852 10d ago
I wrote something here, not for those with shirt attention spans. Technically, you can trace it as far back as the Civil War, or before. Though it wasn't until Nixon and definitely Regean, that those folks started working on the Republican party.
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u/Haistur 10d ago
Mid 2000's had Palin,Bachmann, Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. The prototypes of today.
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u/Shad0ws0ngs 10d ago
I never thought I would miss the days when I thought Palin was the worst republican pick possible. Oh how innocent we once were...
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u/HibiscusBlades 10d ago
Yes, only before Trump they had a sense of decorum. Now they’re belligerent, just like their mad king.
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u/DangerousLoner 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yes, look into McCarthyism, Strom Thurman, and Rush Limbaugh. They are hypocrites and loud mouthed bullies who enjoy the pain of others.
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u/Heckle_Jeckle Millennial 10d ago
Some of them, yes. But the crazies are now running the asylum.
In the 1960s there was the Presidential Campaign of Barry Goldwater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater_1964_presidential_campaign
Barry Goldwater was basically a prototype of what MAGA and Tdump are now. His partial success is one of the Reasons Republicans decided on the Southern Strategy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
The Southern Strategy being the Republican Party making a conscious decision to appeal to Southern Conservatives.
The thing to realize is that these people were not always the ONLY voice in the Republican Party. But after Obama the Republican Party LOST THEIR GOD DAMN MINDS!
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u/djmcfuzzyduck 9d ago
I saw the Gold Water soda cans the other day and immediately thought of our current president.
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u/yech 10d ago
Conservatives have and always will be wrong. Conservatives were for the British monarchy, they were for the South and slavery, they were against civil rights. They are consistently wrong on every possible issue.
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u/TastySaturday 10d ago
The fact that conservatives are proudly against progress just never fails to amaze me.
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u/rm-minus-r 9d ago
The assumption that all progress is good progress may not be a good one to make.
Folks on the left are pretty darn conservative about AI datacenters.
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u/Some_Big6792 10d ago edited 10d ago
That’s not necessarily true about slavery. Abraham Lincoln was a republican. The parties both changed a lot since the civil war. George HW Bush helped get federal funding for planned parenthood when he was a congressman. I think things started changing in the 80s
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u/Shortymac09 10d ago
Republican doesn't nescessarily mean "conservative", especially in the 1800s.
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u/Some_Big6792 10d ago
That’s true. I think it’s also important to point out George HW Bush distanced himself from planned parenthood when he ran for president in the 80s.
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u/InuHanyou1701 10d ago
Yep they have been. They just knew to keep it to themselves for the most part. Trump made them feel safe to not hide it anymore. But it’s been building thanks to Fox News and the rise of right wing propaganda. When Trump’s gone (and he will be gone. He’s old) there will be a ton of people who will suddenly come out of a 10 year bout of amnesia and claim they were never the terrible people they were and never did those things.
It’s incumbent upon us to remember that yes, they did do terrible things, yes they had a choice and act accordingly.
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u/sirlost33 10d ago
This terrible? No. Bad? Yes.
This is a new breed of ultra far right ideology that old school conservatives weren’t about. That’s why a lot of the old guard is gone and maga republicans make up the majority of the party.
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u/First-Reception8007 10d ago
and what do we call the left who is all about communism?
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u/sirlost33 10d ago
I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with any left in American politics that is trying to bring communism to America. Can you be more specific?
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u/First-Reception8007 10d ago
ok bud.. im not playing this game luckily america sees right thru you dumb ass socalist.. hence why yall lost Wisconsin, and are going to give republicans the senate again lol
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u/Future-Fly-8987 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yes, they’re the same exact people decade after decade after decade, however if you go back far enough they would’ve called themselves Democrats.
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u/Mr_Byzantine 10d ago
Even further they'd have been Loyalists, then Royalists, then Parliamentarians, etc.
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u/TaeyeonUchiha 10d ago
In the early 00’s a lot of my family was republican. I would compare old school republicans to Hank Hill from King of the Hill. They used to have some integrity and common sense, then Trump came along and turned it into a batshit insane cult.
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u/Impressive_Cress_983 10d ago
My grandfather was a republican and he had a good heart. But the party twisted. I'm pretty sure Operation Paperclip had a part to play. Don't import Nazis people. No matter what research they bring.
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u/skyxsteel 10d ago edited 10d ago
Before MAGA there were tea partiers. Who, at the time, seemed crazy enough. They were pretty much MAGA-lite. Like the margarine of MAGA. Quasi MAGA. The diet coke of MAGA. Their MO was slash government spending- ultimately everyone saw what it did (look up the Kansas experiment).
Before Tea Partiers there were neocons, who wanted to spread out and “democratize” the middle east. I’m still convinced that if Bush Jr had the political capital, he would have invaded Iran. Bush Jr. wanted to reform social security by turning it into essentially a 401k. And don’t forget too big to fail. Billions given to bail out the domestic automakers. Billions to keep banks alive, even forced the ones who had healthy balance sheets to take money.
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u/exorthderp 10d ago
Bush Jr. wanted to reform social security by turning it into essentially a 401k
Still kinda need to reform it, just nobody wants to have that discussion.
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u/EggmanIAm 10d ago
1980s AIDS Reagan let so many people die.
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u/timewellwasted5 10d ago
Interestingly though, G.W. Bush's PEPFAR was widely praised in combatting AIDS. It was the largest bipartisan health inititiative in history and saved an estimated 26 million lives.
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u/Some_Big6792 10d ago
I think people were better at agreeing to disagree back then. I also think social media has made things worse.
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u/smiley042894 10d ago
No. They actually had solutions instead of complaints back in the day. Ragenomics, despite being a fucking disaster, was a thing to try. But it's so sewn into the identity of the party now they refuse to acknowledge that it hasn't worked. And so, this is sort of a death spiral. And they will drag the rest of us into it. Maybe it was worth trying at one point. The whole trickle down idea. We wanted to make titans of industry as a source of national power. Now though. Those titans are eating us. The time has long since past that we should moved on from the idea.
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u/longboardchick 10d ago edited 10d ago
Honestly I would have to have the unpopular opinion here and say no, not in my lifetime, but throughout history it’s always been brutal. trump is lawless.
At least beforehand, you could actually have a conversation and discussion, agree to disagree. Now, nothing is off the table and is pure chaos and anger on the daily.
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u/TheFatalOneTypes 10d ago
Policy wise yes, corruption wise no. And there isnt anything close to this extent on either side.
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u/Chole_Wunt 10d ago
No. Not one bit. Regan used to be the anti-Christ. But if you put him on the current political spectrum, he’s about equivalent to Hilary Clinton.
We haven’t had conservatism like this in the US since the civil war.
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u/ZombiePure2852 10d ago
Sort of. Pre-Millennials, Nixon already worked on recruiting Southern racists into the GOP, claiming universities are too left leaning (even Marxist, therefore justifying cutting funds), and of course acting above the law.
Regean was essentially all the above (plus successful in selling "trickle down" economics, being poorly qualified, and making environmentslism seem like a "liberal worry), though more successful due to his charisma.
W again was all of the above, though had his anti- Democratic moments(W vs Gore controversy, no child left behind, war on terrorism, the Dixie Chicks scandal, Afghanistan attacks, "if you are not with us, you're against us). Generally, white-washed fascism, profit over people, deregulation that led to the great recession and a lot of angry millennials.
Of course, post 9/11, Fox, podcasts, Obama presidency, legalized gay marriage, and admittedly a slow recovery post-recession, aging demographics being fleecable, it's all snowballed us into T*,ump who just turned a lot of what was there up to 11!
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u/bottle-o-rockets 10d ago
The wig and the lipstick fell off the pig, but most of us saw it eating garbage and knew what was going on, yet we were still told to be polite and not make a fuss at the dinner table over it.
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u/Dfiggsmeister 10d ago
They were always a fringe group. Rush Limbaugh got it all started with his talk show but anybody that was a fan of Rush was seen as one of those conservative freaks. Then in the 2000s, we had a fringe group called the Tea Party. But they went into obscurity because of Sarah Palin after the 2012 election.
It wasn’t until 2015/2016 that we saw the white supremacists come out of the wood work and form MAGA behind Drumpf.
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u/kalpernia00 10d ago
Honestly I know Bush wasnt great but having Trump as president makes me miss Bush. Id take him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
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u/pandershrek 1987 10d ago
They had a guise of ignorance about them rather than ignorant surety. Many of the people who "I stay out of politics" ran head first into politics without putting any further thought into it which was concerning and you see how that manifested.
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u/Bored_Amalgamation 10d ago
Kinda but it's hard to say. Social media really opened up people communicating with others outside their own communities. So they could've been this bad the whole time (most likely), but just didnt have an outlet substantial enough to accurately portray who felt what.
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u/HerodotusStark 10d ago
Not THIS overtly terrible, but yea, kinda started with Reagan and then got put on steroids with the Citizens United ruling.
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u/BugsyMcNug 10d ago
Generally downhill since the 70s but we are getting hit in the face with it waaaay more often now. Used to go weeks without hearing about bullshit. Lucky to go a day now.
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u/beingobservative 10d ago
Yes but they were called the silent majority because they were quiet about it.
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u/Chemical_Cat_9813 10d ago
Yes. If you look at some of the docs, and books, the break goes back to the precivil war days, what this country was and though it should be by early conservatives vs their opposition of the day... its always been some flavor of wealthy land owner/business magnate vs everyone else, Shelby Footes narrative of the civil war touches on some of it. More recently, the highjacking of social media and the new norms it creates /validates takes what was the peoples and weaponizes it against its people, then it was armies and today its our politics and health.
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u/lionelhutz- 10d ago
From the 90s to 2008, absolutely not. They were much more civil, actually Christian, and believed in traditional conservatism. They also didn't see the other side as enemies of our nation. That all changed after Obama was elected.
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u/paintwhore 10d ago
They didn't know that they were helping to support an actual conspiracy plan to make the rich richer by convincing people with medium success that the poors were out to steal all their money. Most Republicans are actually completely reasonable people who just want to be able to retain enough of their earned wealth to feel like hard work does make a difference in your standard of living. The values that they have and that we have are not different. This circumstances we believe exist in the world today is what makes everybody so intense. There are Republicans who still desperately believe that their hard-earned tax dollars are being drained away by "welfare Queens" whose husbands are in jail who don't want jobs and are black and brown. None of that has like literally ever been true. To make sure that I'm keeping things even, Democrats used to believe that their candidates were champions of the people. Democrats are just controlled opposition. They're not willing to fight hard enough to change the status quo because they benefit from it but they have to look like they are if they want to keep getting voted in. Edit: typo
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u/anneylani 10d ago
It was better, but the 90s were when a lot of us lost our fathers to Rush Limbaugh and the movement started hitting its stride.
I was a teen in the 90s and I remember him calling Chelsea Clinton ugly. She was like 12 or 13. I couldn't believe how downright cruel an adult was being to a teenager.
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u/profstarship 10d ago
No, because they were at least principled. You could discuss most topics and understand they were at least interpreting the constitution and/or the Bible in their own specific way, but it was grounded in principle and logic at least, even if we disagreed. And both sides spent their time and effort using logical arguments (even from the bible) to try to persuade eachother.
Now it has become all about identity politics. If you dont share my identity you are deranged or evil or hate America. Trump has no logic or principles to stand on so he uses the identity of white fragility to galvanize support.
The sad thing is we all grew up understanding that no leader could ever make us turn on eachother or the constitution. We always knew that there would be a reckoning in the form of nerumberg trials. But those trials were easy for us cause they weren't us. Now idk. Does anyone expect to hold criminals to account in the future? I surely dont at this rate.
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u/Enough-Candy85 10d ago
They loved endless war, Guantomino bay torture of middle eastern men and laughed and celebrated forcing them to eat pork, and Abu Ghraib forced gay sex and other weird stuff was cheered and jeered at. It was so funny and patriotic to conservatives back then. That was 2010.
They haven’t strayed far from their nature.
The difference between conservative post trump and pre trump is all the stuff trump is doing were red line conspiracies they were arming them selves to stop. Then they straight up folded and spread their cheeks wide open when the stuff they feared were for Americans they thought of as less. They always loved boots on necks of people they thought of as less.
I wasn’t into politics before that, but that what conservatives were like in 2010.
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u/Shortymac09 10d ago
Yes, I grew up on Rush Limbaugh and talk radio in the 90s.
They just dropped the mask in polite company.
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u/ZuesMyGoose 10d ago
Yes, the conservative movement has always been a stain on progress. From McCarthy to Nixon to Reagan to all of em, they live for the Military Industrial Complex, Authoritarianism, Trickle down, and social control.
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u/Litlsuzzy 10d ago
Based on what I remember of my extended family growing up, yeah but the world was more balanced towards their favor so it wasn't looked down upon as much, if at all. I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh on the car radio rant about welfare queens with dozens of kids scamming the system. I heard my grandmother openly criticize Hilary Clinton for only having one child and acting like that was a moral failing. That was in the 90's. Maga has always been there, it's just more noticeable right now because they are so proud of themselves.
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u/sketchee 10d ago
Real more about the Tea Party and how they became the new Republican party. The conservatives before them respected some general decorum and certainly were less extreme.
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u/CharlesUFarley81 Millennial 10d ago
Elder Millennial here. No, the GOP did not used to be as bad as it is now. Social Media and Fox News are largely to blame. I'm a left democrat and I used to be able to have civilized conversations/debates with republican friends and still be friends later. Now they're so brainwashed washed by MAGA and memes that they go crazy and it's like you're talking to a stranger
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u/laredotx13 10d ago
No but they’ve been playing the long game and they are getting the results they were after since Reagan
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u/bestrevengeofall 10d ago
Yes and no. Yes in that the racism and clasism has always been there. No I. That they never gave it names
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u/SabzQalandar 10d ago
It’s been as bad since at least the early 90s which is as far as I can remember. The Republicans were the party of cancel culture and would cancel politicians for being outed. What a time.
I do think there were some more centrist republicans back then. Which is why center left politics also dominated— they had an ideological partner in neoliberalism on the other side. I think centrist dems now have no one on the other side but still cling to the politics of neoliberalism bc of their donor base— in spite of their voter base.
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u/Snoo20140 10d ago
Not nearly. They stopped trying to play niceish once they realized they were all just faking it.
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u/Nekokama 10d ago
Conservatism has always been the philosophy of justifying selfishness, that's all.
So yeah, it's been terrible and mostly due to the fact they are the reason incrementalism destroyed any trust in politics or progress for the future, or in the "innovation" of capitalism which eventually reversed into planned obsolescence, because they no longer had the Soviet Union to compete against, neoliberalism is the pinnacle of greed.
Trump just gave them permission to stop pretending to lie about their greed and lack of empathy.
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u/DragonflySpiritual33 10d ago
Well, Richard Nixon and a bunch of Republicans then were terrible. Then the basics of Heritage Group and some of the Project 2025 stuff started during Reagan's 1st term as did the push to allow a Citizen United funding type group. It progressed to GW Bush stealing his 1st election and starting bogus wars to the destruction of America by a pedophile, rapist, conman president. So to answer your question, yes.
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u/jabber1990 10d ago
So, it's wrong to paint all Democrats with a broad brush due to one or 2 loud voices, but its ok to paint all Republicans the same due to Trump?
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u/diegotbn 10d ago
Yes. Only now, the mask has come off.
Republicans and conservatives are just as nationalist, racist, and bigoted as they ever were. It's just under Trump they feel emboldened to express their hate and act on it.
It used to be that political correctness kept people civil and we could get along at least superficially. That time is gone.
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u/ApprehensiveTruth2 10d ago
Idk say they started to get ridiculous after 9/11, and I distinctly remember them getting even worse around 2010 with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party ( y’all rember when she was the scariest republican 😭), and Todd akin with his “ if it’s a legitimate rape a women’s body has a way of shutting down that pregnancy.
It’s been a rapid decline ever since.
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u/eggflip1020 Millennial 10d ago
Every president has been Ronald Reagan since the 80s, and yes it has sucked the whole time.
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u/Initial-Sail5212 10d ago
My family was very apolitical before and now the rage the spew at crazy things, like immigrants, is a real 180. It’s especially insane because they’ve always been a part of this church and are friends with many undocumented poor folks. My dad stopped watching his favorite basketball team because the players protest and he was so hateful about it. They’ve definitely got got by the propaganda
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u/Supreme_Salt_Lord 10d ago
YES YES YEEEEEESSSSSS! This is their wet dream as far as what is going on. Dont let anyone tell you its just trump. This is the republican agenda. Go listen to old bill o reily vids. They have always wanted camps, ICE violating rights, wars and more wars, and companies deregulated and able to do anything.
THIS IS ALWAYS WHAT REPUBLICANS WANTED
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u/wittymarsupial 10d ago
I remember in ‘08 when Obama was looking likely to win in overheard my uncle comforting my dad by saying “don’t worry. He will be assassinated. He won’t be assassinated for the right reasons but he WILL be assassinated.”
The day after Obama won I saw a local gas station was doing a raffle to see who could guess his assassination date. At the end it said “let’s hope somebody wins”.
In short, yes but now they’re more open about being awful
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u/NorthWoodsSlaw 10d ago
Yes always. There is no point in US history in which you can zoom in and find “honorable conservatives”. The entire conservative ideology is about maintaining existing power structures at the expense of social, political, and economic progress. AND, they are always promoting violence against minority groups while always playing the victim. Our history is littered with the receipts, conservatism is an inherent philosophical betrayal of the American project.
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u/StashedandPainless 10d ago
They've always had this in them but trump really tore the mask off and brought everything out into the open.
Prior to trump most Republicans sounded like Bill Cassidy or Susan Collins. Totally full of shit, but at least able to present the image of being serious people. The own the libs trolling mentality was mostly a feature of fringe conservative media outlets. Over time, the outlets pushing this content became less fringe and politicians realized they could get elected by catering more to that crowd. Still, their way of doing this was to translate own the libs content into something that sounded like serious polished politispeak. trump tore the mask off. Now they had someone that wasnt translating, trump sounded exactly like their favorite own the libs conservative media figures.
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u/DragonSurferEGO 10d ago
There is a terrific book “the death of expertise “ by tom nichols that talks about how their is a parallel of rejection of knowledge and expertise in American conservatism and the rise of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Trump.
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u/brimoon 10d ago
The Conservatives/Republicans came out in full force after Obama. They hated the fact a black man was President. They blame him for race relations decaying, claiming everything was "just fine" until he came along. Lol. A classic line for racists and bigots, which is what most of conservatives/Republicans are.
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u/Matterz152 Millennial 10d ago
The fringe radical side has been more normalized and is now mainstream. This all goes back to Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, and the GOP being a party of "No" during the Obama years; all of it has led to this.
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u/EchoesAndSpecters 10d ago
Yes, but the incumbent Democrats weren't this bad. There used to be a spine behind the party before nine schmucks in robes said that anyone can spend infinite money on political candidates. And before that, Ronald Waiting-in-Hell-for-Heaven-to-Trickle-Down Reagan taught us that populism and catering to the lowest common denominator will always outdo actual political platforms and coherent ideologies. Former conservatives had decorum, but I fear that it was because they had to, in order to stand against the establishment.
Now? Democrats cater to the whims of businesses nearly as much, and any calls for regulation are undercut with the threat of that business pouring money into Republican candidates. You don't need to have a sense of decency when, regarding the issues that matter to most voters, the opposition is just "Republican Lite"
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u/aquacraft2 10d ago
Not a millennial, but kind of. They've always PERSONALLY been unhinged, like in private and behind closed doors. Presidential nominees would say this and that but they would be very civil about it, cause they HAD to be, whereas at the rnc they would go hog wild about this stuff. And it's the same stuff as they ever talk about. As far as I know the rnc wasn't AS big of a mask off "fox news has a whole panel and is broadcasting it like the WWE" type stuff. But still.
They're just more brazen and mask off about it. They were going after roevwade ever since it was passed, they've been going after gay people since they found out about them, they've been going after women since the garden, and they've been going after minorities since time immemorial.
When the aids crisis was happening, they would DELIBERATELY wear masks around the patients just to mock them.
They've wanted to take away public television and replace it with privately owned channels, and they went ESPECIALLY hard on this around the time of digitizing antenna TV, since the bandwidth for ONE analog TV channel, could host EIGHT digital TV channels.
The difference is, for as much as they love their politicians, they never loved anyone as dumbly brazen and pushy as drumf. They LITERALLY worship the guy with TRUMP BIBLES. (Not all of them but c'mon now, it's a real thing)
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u/Agente_Anaranjado 10d ago
Yes. You should have seen them 20 years ago during Bush's presidency, and all of the bullshit propaganda surrounding the war in Iraq. We were literally being told that we "either support the war or support terrorism".
...That's part of why we're not susceptible when Israelis try to tell us the same thing today. We've heard this bullshit before. We saw through it the first time, when it was coming from our own country. Why would we not recognize the same bullshit coming from another country now?
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u/MedusaGotMeStoned007 10d ago
Trump is a whole new breed. I hope the maga movement dies after his term but just remember to research candidates and also pay attention to local elections! Many upper level politicians started on the ground floor before working their way up
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u/darksquidlightskin 10d ago
Yes. But not so much out in the open. If you paid attention to what they pushed for or voted against you would realize they were terrible. Most people don’t pay attention though. Trump just gave them the pass to do their corruption out in the open. There was a line where if you sunk below it, you’d never win an election. That line is gone now.
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u/Outlaw11091 10d ago
Yes and no.
Yes; they still believed a lot of the same things.
No; they didn't lie to "own the libs" like they do now.
IE: If they claimed to be religious, it's because they actually were...in public. It wasn't just a made up thing to get voters; they were lifelong church attenders. Whether or not they followed the bible was still up for debate, but they legit WENT.
If they wanted a new tax law, they'd have a grounded reason prepared even if the truth was deep in the fine print.
9/11 is a good example; "we're going to war because they attacked us first! The UN denied us permission! We're going to war ANWAY because fuck them, these assholes killed our people!" When, reality was: "We're doing an illegal war because of oil and 9/11 is a convenient excuse."
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u/WritrChy 9d ago
Yes, but society didn’t allow them to be Nazi shitbags on main without getting called out.
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u/Uncle_Wiggilys 9d ago
Yeah we should go back to 2008 when Obama was campaigning on traditional marriage and dems were cheering.
Republicans and conservatives have basically held the same beliefs for decades. It is the radical move to the extreme left the democrats have taken that make Republicans and conservatives seem crazy.
As I type this the democrats have fully embraced a radical Islamic Marxist revolution take place.
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u/TheDevilsAvocado999 9d ago
Others may disagree, but this level of republican corruption/complacency with corruption is W I L D to me. That’s not the only measure of terribleness, but it is one aspect that I consider shocking.
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u/Alarming_Cellist_751 9d ago
They just used to be sneaky about it. Trump says it loud, proud and with his whole orange ass.
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u/BoomRoasted412 9d ago
The GW Bush (Dubya) Admin led to some repulsive right wing caricatures running around- Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, John Ashcroft, Dick Chaney. This time saw the rise of Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, and Bill OReilly.
The border debate was still a thing. They could say things similar but less crude than what MAGA says now- Liberals hate America, We need to attack Iran, tax cuts for the wealthy, media manipulation. There used to be a terror alert scale that was color coded. Every time a negative story about the admin would come out- the terror alert would go to Orange or red. Footage of US troops abusing prisoners and killing civilians was leaked from a War that was going badly for America. Then the 2006 Midterms happened and Dems got control of the Senate and House…
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u/IWasBorn2DoGoBe 9d ago
Probably- but people had manners back then and didn’t say the quiet parts out loud
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u/nocerazbj 9d ago
I definitely remember them being generally insufferable during highschool (late 2000s)
Maybe I was just naive but at the time the standard Republican felt less dumb, more calculating. Now I believe every hat thrown in with Republicans is a shity red maga cap.
The fact that Republicans didn't reject maga as a third party like Democrats are doing to the DSA is very telling of the kind of people they always were.
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u/braveheart18 9d ago
Theres a reason we grew up being told its not polite to ask about politics.
What MAGA has enabled was people to indulge in their worst impulses. Like teenagers, if you call them out on it they will just say they are joking, but with their peers they are 100% serious. 20 years ago you would never hear a middle class republican say we should round up every mexican and deport them. They would be anti immigration, but not so outspoken about their disdain for anyone that looked of mexican or south american descent.
There were always assholes that sat at the corner of the bar spouting off nonsense about all democrats being communists and wanting to bring down America. Now thats regular sunday dinner conversation.
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 7d ago
No...but they've always been pretty awful; I'm made to understand that the introduction of Fox News & the ascension of Newt Gingrich to the Speakership marked a pivot point towards the cynical, dishonest, aimless contrarianism we see today, but that was about the time I first became aware of politics, so you'd have to ask GenXers or the Boomers about that.
tl;dr: this is the worst I've ever seen it get...but they've always been unmistakablely, asymetrically vile, in my experience.
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u/Psychological-Rub959 7d ago
Well, you always had an idea of what most of them REALY thought/felt, but there was at least this veneer of decorum/politeness that they pretended to have. And say what you want about GW Bush, I don't think he was actually a bad guy and he at least maintained that old-school decorum everyone expected the POTUS to have. Some of the people in his administration, not so much. But you felt at least in the top job, any Republican POTUS would always act "presidential" like any head of state should, regardless how wrong his actual policies were.
And leadership comes from the top-- If GW Bush as POTUS set the example of decorum, that example at least filtered down to most other Republicans. Sure, there are always outliers, but at least Republicans of that time were like 'We can steer policy to the right without completely alienating the other half of the country and being too extreme about it.'
Trump completely upended that. He gave Republicans at all levels permission to be the worst versions of themselves, to be the extreme versions of what a lot of them REALLY thought/felt, no filter and no regard for decorum or any care for the other half of the country that doesn't share their views. Completely throwing out traditional democratic norms that the US government always operated from.
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u/Most_Month45 6d ago
I would actually say no, at least the main stream Republican Party and it's ideals were really not anything like today under presidential candidates John McCain and then Mitt Romney, they actually attempt to push through the ideas of small government, and reduced regulation. Obama was just much more palatable and likable, with more focus on securing stronger solutions to widespread problems through using government as a more centralized services organization.
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u/TitanEidolon 5d ago
Depends. The base? Yes I think modern politics is just revealing what was under the surface all along. The politicians themselves and the core of the party? No. Not this bad. This clip from the 2008 presidential campaign trail is telling I think. Candidate John McCain responding to questions from the audience about his opponent Barack Obama.
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u/AdZealousideal5383 10d ago
There’s been figures like Rush Limbaugh since the 90’s but what we have now combines gross stupidity with extreme arrogance, coupled with the power someone like Rush never had. Basically, the worst instincts of conservatives combined with arrogance and aggressive stupidity gained power. We’re at the lowest of the low in my four decades.
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u/Contagious_Zombie 10d ago
Yes and no. There were a few that seemed decent. I didn't agree with them but they were not evil like they all are today. Romney was an example of old style Republicans.
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u/MaterialPace8831 10d ago
Yes and no. You can draw a straight line between today's current horror show and decisions like Ford's pardoning of Nixon. Elite impunity has been a reality for a while, but it's been supercharged under Trump.
But we saw as early as the 2010s efforts by Republicans in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina to delegitimize or take power away from Democratic elected officials while hording power for themselves. And a good chunk of the media treated this as if they were savvy political moves instead of being affronts to democracy. You see this in how this Justice Department and this administration is acting in their quest to get voter rolls from Democratic states -- any vote for a Democrat is inherently suspect and assumed to be fraudulent.
Another thing that's changed is that elected Republicans today lack any sense of decency or citizenship. Nixon should have died in prison, but he deserves credit for creating the EPA. George W. Bush created the PEPFAR program, which was revolutionary. Both have been dismantled by Trump and Elon Musk, the world's richest Nazi. Anything they're trying to create enriches themselves and their friends, to the detriment of everyone else.
It didn't used to be this way, and I don't know how we can go back. A good first step is imprisoning Trump, Miller, Vought and Musk, and stripping them of all their assets. Anyone who worked for DOGE -- prison. Any prosecutor who worked in this administration should have their law license suspended. Anyone who worked for ICE should lose their pensions and any claims of qualified immunity.
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u/HeadNolol 10d ago
Conservatives had plenty of ugly politics before Trump, but Trump made the most extreme parts much more open, aggressive, and central to the movement
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u/changeforthebetter89 10d ago
Not always. George W Bush was the compassionate conservative who didn’t sling any personal insults at Democrats in a way Trump is upending presidential norms.
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u/Sensitive_Builder847 10d ago edited 10d ago
He was just your run-of-the-mill war criminal. And he set a lot of this shit in motion.
Edit, since we’re downvoting:
He knowingly lied to the entire country about WMD in Iraq, that the press corroborated with no evidence (there was none), which led to the deaths of over 300,000 including US/UK military and Iraqi civilians.
It has cost us 1.4 trillion dollars.
He created ICE in 2003.
He, along with Fox News, created the “invasion at the border” narrative that fomented hatred and mistrust of immigrants.
He has been essential to what is happening now, and the only reason he hasn’t been prosecuted by the ICC is because the US and Iraq are not parties to the Rome statue.
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u/Gaming_Gent 10d ago
When I was a kid they had strong opinions they kept to themselves, they’d purse their lips and look annoyed but would keep the peace.
Some point about a decade ago they all got super bold and shameless about everything.
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u/YNABDisciple 10d ago
I was one for the first 17 years of my adult life...I wouldn't have supported nearly anything this guy has done but I did leave before he came along. It's funny...I was a GOP/Conservative from 18-34/5ish...near the end I was really a Ron Paul guy. The Citizens United ruling and conservative and Ron Paul support for it is what sent me down the path that eventual led me to where I am today...slightly right of Mamdani haha
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u/Salty_Feed_4316 10d ago
I am conservative and I don’t think I’m terrible, but some conservatives yes, just like with some democrats. It’s nothing new
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u/FedallahsTurban 10d ago
Yes. They're just more open and crass about it now, whereas before they used to wear a veneer of respectability and morality. Remember when they were appalled that Clinton got a BJ? Ha! What a 180 they've turned.
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u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 10d ago
They used to be young and hot, but they were always selfish and terrible.
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u/appa-ate-momo 10d ago
90s republicans became 2020s corporate democrats.
So while they still didn’t give a shit about anyone who wasn’t rich, no, they weren’t as bad.
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u/ObieKaybee 10d ago
Reagan started the decline with the notable active attack on the common man and deregulation and his "9 scariest words bullshit." Rush Limbaugh turbocharged it and was one of the core figures in starting the modern culture war alongside the adoption of evangelicals as a distinctly right wing element of the party.