Bush Baggage

I think America's Brahmins have succumbed to Bush baggage. Under Reagan they could reasonably fool themselves into thinking their hollow party doctrines had meaning beyond self-aggrandizement. Reagan largely refused to reward the southern lowlifes that elected him with prominent positions. 

Daddy Bush embraced his inner redneck. Lee Atwater became head of the RNC and infected the Republican Party with a treasonous, disenfranchising strain of cruelty and barbarism, using the tactics the southern racists had long employed against blacks against Democrats, to enormous long-term effect.

Bush Junior, an admirer of Atwater who cut his political teeth in the 1988 election and lacked any hint of character, himself a redneck at heart combining arrogance and stupidity, fully handed his administration over to hacks. He instituted failed, endless wars and destroyed the world economy with mindless deregulation. Conservatives continued to support him, including his massively irresponsible bankrupting of the government. 

The transition was complete. Conservative values meant nothing. Fiscal sanity was off the table. Winning meant everything. Republicans declared themselves against Barack Obama's presidency before he was in office and resisted him by any means as he tried to clean up the wreckage left by Junior.

Did Republicans care? Not one bit. Forward to Trump. A few holdouts mount half-assed attacks on Trump's unbelievable assault on the law and American values. Everyone else falls in line and defends him, no matter that he is obviously mentally impaired and ethically flawed beyond anything.