THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DESTROYED

David Gerrold

So some people think that Trump is going to destroy the Republican party.

No. The party destroyed itself a long time ago.

It started almost a century ago. It started when the Republican party decided to obstruct FDR's attempts to pull the nation out of the Great Depression.

After WWII, the decline of the party began with Nixon's smear campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas — the campaign that got him into Congress, where he and Joe McCarthy were known as impossible mudslingers.

It found momentum with Fred Koch funding Robert Welch's John Birch Society in the early fifties.

It became public when Ike misguidedly put Nixon on the ticket as VP, thereby legitimizing his antics.

It became obvious with Nixon making an unholy alliance with racists so he could win the presidency.

It grew serious with Nixon's antics that led up to Watergate.

It continued with post-Watergate Nixon training other Republicans in dirty tricks — like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.

It grew worse with Reagan, who was used by the radical right to insert key people into important government positions. That same radical right believed that only they were allowed to win elections.

It became policy with Haley Barbour, then head of the RNC, who declared on the evening of Bill Clinton's election, that the Republicans would never allow Clinton to enjoy a single day in office.

It got dirtier with Richard Mellon Scaife and his trumped up lawsuits against both Bill and Hillary Clinton, all of which used up time and money and accomplished nothing.

It got ugly with Newt Gingrich and his infamous Gopac memo telling Republicans how to campaign against Democrats by using specifically inflammatory adjectives. (He taught them how to lie more effectively.)

It got worse with a colossal waste-of-time attempt to impeach Bill Clinton — not about impeachment as much as obstruction.

It became totally corrupt with the theft of the 2000 presidential election — and deliberately treasonous with the theft of the 2016 presidential election.

No Trump won't take down the Republican party — the party abandoned its principles when it chose to engage in obstructionism against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933.

There is only one thing that can destroy the Republican party — the American voter refusing to give it credibility, refusing to vote for any more of this incompetent, selfish, treasonous, petty bullshit.