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Excellent piece, Claire, particularly the questions you pose at the end. Why, indeed, did the GOP tie itself to this maniac? I am tempted to posit the answers: Because the GOP is a fundamentally white supremacist organization and liked his shamelessness. Because the GOP is even more deeply embedded in the pockets of Big Pharma and Big Oil and needs a sideshow to keep us occupied while they despoil the environment and rob us of any hope of decent healthcare or a liveable environment. Mitch McConnell has made it clear: If the GOP takes power today, they will shut down the government and impoverish Social Security and Medicare and we should believe him. Maybe the GOP just wanted to break this Democracy. If that's their goal, they picked the right man to do it.

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Election update: Democrats are holding their own.

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I think the short Left answer is that the wealth owners had so despoiled the country and made living conditions so much worse—in other words the economic chickens were about to come home—that they actually had to step up and intensify their racism and culture wars. But there is no contradiction between Trump and the strategy Nixon first outlined. Nixon was just more genteel in public (not private as we know) and less incline to rouse rabble. But I would disagree that Trump altered the direction of the GOP—he’s just an erratic crazy person whose willingness to stir up and use violence has made him a better tool for this phase of a Republican takeover that’s been planned by a significant faction for the last 40-50 years.

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Great stuff, Claire. Thanks. Dana Milbank's book on the Republican Party's long, inexorable descent into madness is an answer to your question, I think. It's a start, anyway.

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