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CITYWATCH TODAY--We are at an odd cusp of time. A sitting President has been charged under the articles of impeachment of a crime of high severity, using his office to advance his political goals with a foreign country against a political rival. This is far more serious than dissembling about a sexual act and the evidence is damning, yet Republicans and Republican politicians continue to support Donald Trump.
Looking back to the summer of 1974, five decades ago, we saw that the Republicans, when presented with the evidence of Nixon’s crimes, acted with integrity and alacrity. And assessments of the relative severity of the crimes make it clear that Trump’s transgressions are much more serious than Nixon’s as well.
One party, the Democratic Party, is acting in good faith according to the articles of the US Constitution, and in the interest of the USA, its people and good governance, something necessary for the long-term survival of the country. One party, the Republican Party, is almost universally supporting a President convicted of crimes far worse than the ones that they stood against less than 50 years ago, and absurdly removed from those that they considered Bill Clinton guilty of.
What has led the Republican Party to this sorry state?
Arguably, the dissolution of the GOP started with the President that they impeached. Nixon inherited a decent party which he started on the path which led to today’s shambling, often evil mess. But the party hadn’t died the death of a thousand cuts in his day.
What was the first cut? The Southern Strategy. Nixon leaned into that intentionally racist sweeping up of Dixiecrat voters who were incensed by black people being given equal rights.
That also scooped a lot of white evangelicals, which led to the Moral Majority era of the 1980s, when the formal alignment of the Republicans with Young Earth Creationists, anti-abortionists and anti-evolutionists was cemented. (Read the rest.)
-cw
