Until then, I thought the GOP was a legitimate party.

when my mother explained that Nixon was a racist. Since then, they've little to nothing to dispel their reputation for diminished humanity and supremacy shrouded in religion, tradition, "values." The list is too exhaustive to even start!

The short answer is, YES.

I was lucky growing up in that my entire family were Democrats.
I'm 76 years old too!

The question is, what are you gonna DO about it? Are you going to take a long look in the mirror or are you going to continue to blame Biden, Obama etc?

Because, if you are weighing options, your neighbors would want you to use that mirror and come out of the other side a better person.

Then, help us reclaim and rebuild our nation better than it was before.

(That would be my answer to the person who posed that question.)

and was reelected.

The gnashing of WASPy teeth was horrendous.

I'll guess a Hispanic or Asian heritage president would do the same.

Poor little white feelies.

my older cousins told me how their classmates and teachers in junior high were happy and laughing when the news came out that President Kennedy had been assassinated, and proud that it had happened in Texas. Within five years all of my cousins had moved to California. And my cousins all made more from the appreciation of their houses than most of their classmates made in their whole lives.

When my Grandmother passed away we found a whole trunk with Kennedy memorabilia. I'm so happy that she didn't have to see what Bob jr. has become.

that Pres. Kennedy had been shot. He came back maybe 10 minutes later and said our president was dead. Then he and my teacher started laughing and both agreed he deserved it. They whispered and snickered for a while. Lots of us cried and were shocked. It was one of the most horrible moments of my life.

I was a second grader in Southeast San Diego in 1963. I knew something very bad had happened because all the cafeteria workers were crying. When we got back to class our teacher was also crying. She told us our President had been shot. It was the day before our family left for Thanksgiving break, a trip to Oregon and Idaho to visit our grandmothers. We watched the funeral proceedings from a motel room. It was such a dark and frightening time.

it seems i was at st pius in 63. was that really sixth grade.

Conservative chasing his own tail / tale

You may have never seen it.
I didn't live in it directly but thinking back i could see it. Now I know

Can you post the whole scene with audio? Even if not, thanks!

Rotate that board!

launchd his run for the presidency in Mississippi. Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

Why? That wasn’t a dog whistle, that was a bullhorn blast to the racists that he was one of them.

It WAS “always thus,” Sparky.

EDIT

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.[19]

EDIT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

It’s perhaps the most honest and revealing profile of how republicans operated pre Trump. After Trump, it’s just all out in the open.

Dog whistles once again became bull horns. The past repeated.

Basically all the bad aspects the letter writer mentions (racism, sexism, etc) laid dormant, are just symptoms of the cancer (conservatism) that may have been in remission and just roared back.

I despised Reagan. The Great Communicater, my behind.

I called him the Great Prevaricator.

He was a piece of crap, empty suit.

Nixon and Reagan. Since Reagan there is no question that Republicans have been very openly race bigots.

Yes, it has been. No idea about the author's life or experience, but come on man!
The author needs to review some history, Southern strategy, Willie Horton advert, where St. Ronnie announced his run for president, and many more examples.

The difference is there were enough people who had actual personal knowledge of the damage done by horrible people. Now, History is “who won the Super Bowl in ’72?'” (Don’t bother me with all that nasty shit, I’m trying to watch the Game!).
We were lulled into complacency because they were ashamed of themselves until they weren’t.
That’s The Hill. Do they HAVE to die on it to finally not be horrible people anymore?

Republican party behind when the decided to take on the Dixiecrats from the Democratic party in the 1960s. I'm 73 yo and watched the transformation of my racist family morph from the "always a Democrat" to "Nixon's the one!" And they never looked back.

Just my $0.02

My Grandpa was a patriotic and upright American, but he passed away in December 1980 just as Ronald Reagan was planning to move into the White House. That was the end of it ... the "good" Republicans were weeded out or else they died off, and what was left were the evil, greedy, racist Repukes we have today. It took awhile for that to happen, but Newt Gingrich helped it along.

What's left now is no relation to the original GOP. Just ask all the people who have left since 1980. Being an earnest political "conservative" has nothing to do with today's Repukes, and that's the truth.

That fucker hasn’t gotten half the kicking around he deserves.

He knew the sacrifices made by a generation of Americans - of all political/economic persuasions. Reading the Republican platform of 1956 when Ike was in total control of the Party is a fascinating aberration of Republican orthodoxy. Especially when compared to the 52 and 60 platforms. I'd dare say the 56 platform was written by a socialist.

Funny how so few Republicans today talk about Ike, the last great Republican President, at all.

Guardians of Pedophiles

Welfare queen; states rights; law and order...

He brought the southern evangelicals into the mainstream and gave them power.

more on his racism

https://www.colgate.edu/sites/default/files/2024-07/Cate%20Hughes%20RELG%20Dept%20Honors%20Thesis%20Final%20Draft.pdf

They would be standing up and calling out the racist, fascist, misogynistic assholes that claim to be the conservative party today. If you're not loudly calling out the bad guys I think you are one.

Another case of Rethugs abusing many words of the English language such as 'freedom' and 'liberty'......

Destructives is a more apt word IMO.......

And, to the question "Were we always secretly like this but were pretending we weren’t? YES! Every damned Republican I've known in my 78 years were cruel closeted racists and misogynists once we got to know them.

My mother was descended from staunch Abolitionists, and they were all Republicans. Her mother's grandparents (he was a minister) had hosted Black houseguests several times because they were all attending a Methodist Church meeting together. And they waited on those Black people themselves; they never had servants. And they were proud to do so; each of them had had an older brother who had been killed fighting to abolish slavery in the Civil War, when the Republican Party was mostly Abolitionists and their sympathizers. My mother never let us use racist words or phrases; she always did what she could to educate us about the bad treatment Black people still endured. She was so happy when new laws helped Black people get good education and good jobs. She told me how her family, suffering poverty and hunger in the Great Depression, had mourned over the even greater suffering they could see in Black people they met. But, as the Dixiecrats and Northern racists began to take over the Republican party, she gradually voted for more and more Democrats (and so did her parents and her brothers and her sister). Right before the last election of her life, my mother told me, with widened eyes, "I guess I'm voting for all Democrats this time!" So Yes, there was a political shift in this country.

Society was changing, and the political powers were changing as they were threatened by what the real social needs were.

They powers intentionally confused the terminologies (Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative, Progressive/Socialist, etc.) so they could try to grab constituencies, and to paint the other camp with false labels.

Abolitionist, Lincoln Republicans, Methodist. Great great grandfather died fighting for the north. I had black kids in my class at school and I was shocked to learn that some people thought they shouldn't have the same rights we did. We eventually morphed into Democrats as we saw what Republicans were becoming.

Thanks for posting this.

She was coming of age when WW2 ended. Totally understandable how she became an Ike Republican.

The Radicalized Reactionary Party.

They are counter-revolutionaries. They would have fought on the side of the British had they been alive then.

"The First Step is admitting you're an Asshole!"

Paywall

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/12/small-business-tariffs-republican-bigotry-fuentes/

Surely, as someone active in conservative politics, you've heard of the Southern Strategy? Namely, once the Democrats decided to get out of the business of Koddling Klansmen, the Republicans set up recruiting tables to have all those disaffected bigots (formerly known as "conservative Southern Democrats" ) cast their votes for the elephant.

I mean, Reagan kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi and talked about "states rights." What kind of crowd do you think he was playing to? How about when he was talking about "young bucks eating T-bone steaks"? He wasn't talking about deer or rabbits, so who do you think he was trying to get his audience all riled up about? What buttons was he pushing?

Putting bigots on your team was all part of the plan. Every Republican success for the last fifty years has depended on it.

and dog whistles.
"states' rights"
"young bucks"
"Welfare queens"

Then came TSF and they adored him for the implicit permission to be openly racist.

It took over 40 years to bring their intolerance and hatred out of the closet into the mainstream. From the early 80's on there's been a strong, growing, shift toward ultra right wing ideology that embraced a "white's only" view of who was worthy of leading the nation.
It was fueled buy a White Christian viewpoint that saw themselves as the new chosen people. Jesus became a useful tool in the process of justifying the marginalization of everyone who was not one of them. It never dawned on them that Jesus wasn't white....still hasn't.
The rise of Trump was the trigger point. His election in 2016 empowered them to "reach for the gold". Everything that's happened since then has been a prelude to project 2025, the ultimate power grab that would create a US equivalent of the German 3rd reich, that would rule for 5000 years.
As with Germany, this will end badly. Hopefully we can shut it down before it becomes a river of blood flowing through the streets of America.

Reagan made greed and ignorance fashionable, and Trump has made racism something for the knuckle-draggers to be proud of.....America keeps spiraling because of CONSERVATIVES.

Nixon made black drug users the boogeyman.

Willie Horton...the list goes on and on.

U da guyz

The exact date when "reactionary Republican" turned into "a conservative," I couldn't tell you, but I totally reject the popular definition. A label by any other name, so to speak.

There now seems to be a stark division between "a conservative (Republicanese for asshoile)" and "conservative (pretty much describes me)".

My usual response to queries from both ends of the spectrum (the center seems to get it) is as follows:

I am your classic conservative, at least as defined in a dictionary of the English language (as opposed to Republicanese).

I still work for the same outfit that recruited me out of college in 1975. I have been with the same wonderful woman since 1974. We have raised two solid, intelligent children who have grown up, think independently, did well in their respective colleges, and have jobs in which they earn their own living, have stable, long-term relationships, and are well-respected in their chosen fields.

I am risk-averse, and do not like to make rash, un-thought-out decisions. I have no debts. I have no addictions, not even to alcohol, religion, gambling, or nicotine. My favorite American philosopher is the 18th century Thomas Jefferson.

I am the epitome of “conservative.” Why am I a Democrat? Simple: I do not believe that having a different ethnic background, belief, or income makes one a superior or an inferior being to myself.

They should be referred to as "regressives" since they want to take our society back to antebellum times. What you described as yourself is what I have always envisioned as the true definition of conservative.

They haven’t yet kicked me off of DU, so, at least a couple of people agree with us.

Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I grew up in Virginia for a while. One of the year’s highlights was when my dad used to drive us down the Skyline drive and then walk with us through the Luray Caverns.

No shit dim Sherlock. Republicans didn't have much on the plus side since Lincoln, and under Lincoln there were a lot of war profiteers. After Hoover's Depression, and Roosevelt's saving American life, anyone who voted for Republicans was against America. Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover were monsters. Goldwater was nuts, and after him they got crazier and crazier. Reagan began the downhill slide. Gingrich was pure evil. The Bushes thought they were entitled to the presidency. Orange Caligula is the Devil's very own. Conservative is the American euphemism for fascist.

Rec

Yup.

from India and someone who grew up in NC during the 90's and early '00s I'm going to say they were always like that. I jokingly say I grew up in a MAGA white middle class neighborhood and experienced all the hateful racist xenophobic stuff that they throw around today back when I was growing up during the 90's. They would scream in my neighborhood and school that Indians had come to take their jobs and were not real Americans. On top of that Jesse Helms was my Senator during the 90's who was an open white supremacist who would make Trump blush and look like a choir boy with his racist takes. They have always been hateful racist shit heads but if you didn't grow up in a conservative area you wouldn't know how bad they truly are.

I'm sorry you experienced it.

and family members who have kids on how bad the racism and bullying in schools still are. For me it was the worst I have experienced in my life compared to adulthood. No toxic workplace has ever compared to what I went through as a kid dealing with these MAGA shit heads.

Rec

By the Reagan administration the Republican body politic was fully infected. Trump is the Frankenstein monster you have been constructing since Republicans started hating on FDR in the 1930s. Along the way you folded in the religious nuttery that has infected the country since the arrival of the pilgrims. And now here we are, up to our arm pits in MAGATs.

So yes Robert, you are the bad guys.

just to wonder? You (whoever you are) might want to get a cognitive test or two,

starting in the 1960s with LBJ pushing through the voting rights act and other civil rights legislation. The Democratic Party was full of southern racists, then Nixon's "southern strategy" began to embrace racisim, bigotry, grievance and many of those southern Ds followed their hearts and became Rs. The GOP's appeal to racism and bigotry has only grown over the decades, first just as an election strategy, but now it's become it's identity.

LBJ said something to the effect of, “I fear I have just lost the South for the Democratic Party forever.” It didn’t take long.

Lincoln being an R was one of the reasons the South was D. Took 100 years and the Civil Rights Act for things to switch.

locking up kids in cages, Flash.

But, you’re beginning to snap to it.

Brought to us by horrific republiCON christo-fascists.

Before Reagan and his dog-whistle politics,
before Nixon and his "Southern Strategy",
before Eisenhower and his Operation Wetback,
hell, back to beginning.

The GOP was formed of several disaffected political groups, including former Whigs, Free-Soilers and No-Nothings. No Nothings were fiercely anti-immigrant. The Republican party was made, from the beginning, of a compromise with the worst folk in America,

No amount of messaging is going to change the mind of a racist or a misogynist. Only their particular situation when it’s affected. Then they will never admit they were wrong.

There's Herbert Hoover regarding the great depression, Theodore Roosevelt's foreign wars for capitalism, the gilded age etc. Basically anyone who wants to keep a corrupt system of cronyism in place under the guise of tradition.

They were always there, but you let them ascend into leadership roles under Reagan and Dubya.

Despite Dubya’s attempts to win non-whites over to the Republican Party, the racists and bigots ultimately won out. They provided the votes that put Donald John into office and they’ve got enough numbers and organization to win out. They’re now driving the Trump train to our republic’s ruin.

You made a Devil’s bargain and the devil won out.

I’m scratching my head and wondering if I have any pity for you. I don’t think I do.

Conservatives care deeply about themselves and their immediate family. Liberals care deeply about everyone.

There it is. Tht's it. That's the fundamental difference. Everything else stems from this.

A bitterly ironic word used by JFK to describe the destiny of the two parties. Democrats from the beginning were more populist when that meant rural(!) the hoi poloi and not big money or land holding aristocrats. The liberal bent got destroyed by the slave states and the party split then into a long period of defeat. The liberal GOP, a radical minority of Abolitionists, the westerners, New England and burgeoning industry enjoyed their power and threw the blacks under the bus to get through a close election scandal. No one ever helped blacks transition to a fair and equal life either North or South or in any party. In 1912 the last of the truly liberal Republicans went socialist or Teddy Roosevelt. The GOP came in THIRD and the plutocrats never let the GOP do anything significant for liberals again. Democrats got the disaffected worker slaves of the North, started losing the dissatisfied, emotionally conservative rural vote. The GOP had the help of the heretofore yellow dog KKK to beat Al Smith, a Catholic gov from NY.

From Cleveland to Wilson to FDR, we had moderate champions against the increasing evils of big business, but a liberal trajectory while the GOP moderated their real base of plutocrats and bigots, hate or wealth blinded citizens, to get real numbers. Which of course reached their natural limit under Reagan. Conservatism no longer was fringe Goldwater or the John Birch Society, or closet maniac plutos. It was swept inevitably to fascism which works all too often when people suffer economically. From there to full dictatorship and imperial decline in madness and destruction of the social and physical infrastructure.

Liberal Dems got the bullets. Buried by money and hate and loss of moderate nerve they veered- and continue to veer- away from their historical bases to the tormented and under-served middle- or skip them entirely to get big money(Senator Wright for one). It used to be Dems fought back the intimidation of the slave workers with Tammany Hall tit-for-tat- and immigrants. Waves of numbers, mostly legit. Divisive social identity wars has only been a divisive mire compared to the large scale economic theft of hope for all citizens. By the few, by the few, and kill everyone else.

The GOP is dedicated to minority rule and fraud at all costs with deep dark pockets. The Dems are less than competent at protecting votes- to put it mildly. Or combating ritualistic slander and a false news media. For an incredibly long space of time! I could go along with this small digest of political "progress". Both parties are crap in comparison to several planet threatening crises when a literal handful of people have been handed the power to destroy. It would even be a moral victory though to finally consign the utterly ruined GOP to the designation of an outlawed party and the dustbin of whatever history we might survive.

The whole GOP has reached its ultimate sh*t, self- demonization, and sell-out top to bottom. Where is the best true and effective leadership of humanity? Anyone alive out there?

Glad to see you are finally catching up, 44 years after Reagan.

Asshole.

Conservatives are the party who take our rights and our joy away.
And they are the party who saddle us with more financial pain.
And they are the party not protecting us regarding health, and starvation, and climate.
And they are the party giving money away to people who don’t need it.
And they are the party that burdens us with stricter laws for the wrong reasons, and allow other crimes to go unpunished.
And they are the party that doesn’t want to do anything about guns.

Yea, you nut jobs, you ARE the bad guys.

Which lends itself to being fearful of others not like them. So racism and bigotry have always been part and parcel with the conservative mindset.

Trump took the mask off and showed you who you really are.

When I was a kid, 60+ years ago, Conservatives wanted to conserve good things; they were okay with some social progress but slightly scared of what it might do to them, so they wanted to slow it down a little as it happened. People like those currently in power were called Reactionaries because of their absolute refusal to consider they might be wrong about some things.