r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d ago

Soft Paywall Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s ‘Unimaginable’ Presidency - “Imagine if I had done any of this,” the former two-term president said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-breaks-silence-on-trumps-unimaginable-presidency/
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u/AlphaGoldblum 1d ago

The old Republican guard is dead and gone. Now it's either full loyalty to MAGA or leaving the party altogether.

Some Republicans are grumbling about tariffs, but they know actually doing anything about it will cause the party and Trump to turn on them like sharks smelling blood in the water.

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u/Alex5173 1d ago

The old Republican guard allowed this by chickening out, stepping aside, and retiring. They had the opportunity to carve out the rot and chose to leave it behind them to fester.

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u/AlphaGoldblum 1d ago

Oh, they had plenty of time to stop this. Nixon and Reagan invited the cancer into the party by wooing Evangelicals, but it wasn't until the Tea Party that it fully metastasized. And even then, the GOP still had a slim chance to stop the hostile takeover of the party. Instead they welcomed Palin with open arms and doubled down.

...but the GOP also knew it would win them elections to embrace the lunacy of the religious right. The old guard thought they could outplay the new guard, but, and this is apparent with Trump, they underestimated how fucking unhinged the new blood was.

Just to exemplify this: in the span of decades, Romney went from being considered an insane Republican to seeming completely reasonable (and effectively exiled from the modern GOP).

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u/CutieWithaBoooty 23h ago

What blows my mind is with modern science and access to knowledge, how to religious right can blindly accept things that are obviously not true.

I respect religion and religious people. But at the same time, there’s a difference between religious and just being plain ignorant to the facts of life.

People never cease to amaze me. It’s so predictable how easily persuaded dumb people are.