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I'm with @chrislhayes – before you start talking about how the events of last Wednesday will make a dramatic difference in American politics, I'd like to remind you of how short voters' memories are. A thread! https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1324503621967532037?s=20
The early aughts were a long, slow slide of the GOP reputation, starting around the time that the Bush administration switched its focus focus from the Afghan Taliban to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, after 9/11. https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx
What followed was basically just a shitshow of Republican incompetence and corruption. 4 of the 16 "biggest political scandals of the last 50 years" are Republican-owned in the Bush years: https://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/blog-post/when-power-corrupts-16-biggest-political-scandals-last-50-years
1. Jack Abramoff, a far reaching bribery scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff
2. Tom Delay campaign finance scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay_campaign_finance_trial
3. Scooter Libby and the Plame affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
4. Vitter & DC Madam scandal: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3361462&page=1
2. Tom Delay campaign finance scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay_campaign_finance_trial
3. Scooter Libby and the Plame affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
4. Vitter & DC Madam scandal: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3361462&page=1
Not mentioned in that article, but also notable: (2008) Ted Stevens, longest-serving Republican senator in history, indicted on charges that he hid $250,000 in gifts from an oil company looking for favors: https://www.politico.com/story/2008/07/scandal-rocks-gop-roils-its-plans-012162
And also: (2006) Rep. Mark Foley resigns in disgrace when it turns out he's been sexting with teenage congressional pages. The scandal implicates GOP leaders and other staff, some of whom also resign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley_scandal
Of course, those corruption scandals were just a distraction from the mounting death toll of the War on Terror. By the end of 2008, 4,222 U.S. soldiers had died in Iraq. (That's just 110 more than all the people – 4,112 – who died from COVID in the U.S. on January 7, 2021 alone.)
Beyond the rush to war under flimsy evidence of weapons of mass destruction, which damaged America's reputation, the world learned in April 2004 that U.S. soldiers were torturing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib
Who can forget images like this, of U.S. soldier Lynndie England cheesing with dead Iraqis and leading an emaciated man on a leash? All under Republican leadership. So much for our moral high ground.
Bush doubled-down on interrogation tactics that amounted to torture by an reasonable standard when he vetoed a bill that would outlaw them: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23526436
And, without a doubt, Dems and Republicans share blame for the economic meltdown that resulted in the great recession, but it happened on Bush's watch – like 9/11, the signs were there that something was coming but Congress and his administration ignored: https://promarket.org/2017/10/17/blame-2008-financial-crisis/
This article titled "The Fall of Conservatism" talks about how disgusted even New Fucking Gingrich was with the GOP in mid-2008, and how many feared they'd be wandering in the wilderness for "years or decades ... like the Dems after 1968."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/the-fall-of-conservatism
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/the-fall-of-conservatism
Things were so bad that even the GOP could see the writing on the wall. Here's another article from before the election even happened, in 2008-09, where Republicans were talking about the prospects of a coming blue wave and its long impacts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/26/uselections2008-republicans
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/26/uselections2008-republicans
Note the similarity in that header: "moderate Republicans fear a wipeout that would leave their party in the grip of evangelicals increasingly out of touch with the public." Huh, sounds familiar, doesn't it – kinda like how the GOP is increasingly beholden to extremists?
While it's not uncommon for a party in trouble to lower its expectations and try and turn out its base with scare tactics, it's still kind of incredible how Republicans assumed shit was going to be so bad they'd be shut out of power – maybe forever.
And here's Salon, talking in pretty broad terms about how conservatism and the GOP are in a death spiral: https://www.salon.com/2008/08/07/frank_wrecking/
A post-mortem of the election from Rolling Stone, in 2009-09, was titled "How Bush Destroyed the Republican Party." https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/how-bush-destroyed-the-republican-party-162234/
And yet... even as everyone assumed the GOP was finished by the dawn of 2009 – from the combination of terrible leadership, obvious corruption, and the alleged demographics shift that would hand elected offices to Dems – it would only be TWO YEARS before the tides began to turn.
In the 2010 midterms, Dems lost the House and barely hung on to the Senate – losing their very brief, nearly filibuster-proof majority there. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131039717
The 2012 election was a mixed bag – Dems clawed back a few seats in the Senate and slightly expanded their caucus in the House while still not gaining control. GOP expanded the number of governorships, but lost a few state legislative bodies. https://ballotpedia.org/November_6,_2012_election_results
But 2014 was a Dem massacre. The Senate started 53-45 Dem, and ended 54-44 GOP. Dems lost seats in the House, giving the GOP a wider margin of control. GOP gained governorships, and dramatically increased the number of state legislative bodies they controlled.
So we went from the Republican Party at death's doorstep in 2009 to having broad legislative control of American government at every level.
Point being: America can't get enough of these purveyors of corruption and misery. No matter how disgusted Americans are with the Republicans at the moment, if you just give them a few years they'll forget all about it and take another chance on the GOP.
