Monday Morning Read - Where Republicans Have Been Headed For Decades

(Gavin Coates, Earthypublications.com)

Paul Krugman traces the devolution of the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party and its knuckle- dragging base from Dumbya to Palin to Trumpism (a.k.a., American fascism):

Almost six months have passed since Donald Trump overtook Jeb Bush inpolls of Republican voters. At the time, most pundits dismissed the Trump phenomenon as a blip, predicting that voters would soon return to more conventional candidates. Instead, however, his lead just kept widening. Even more striking, the triumvirate of trash-talk — Mr. Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz — now commands the support of roughly 60 percent of the primary electorate.

But how can this be happening? After all, the antiestablishment candidates now dominating the field, aside from being deeply ignorant about policy, have a habit of making false claims, then refusing to acknowledge error. Why don’t Republican voters seem to care?

Well, part of the answer has to be that the party taught them not to care. Bluster and belligerence as substitutes for analysis, disdain for any kind of measured response, dismissal of inconvenient facts reported by the “liberal media” didn’t suddenly arrive on the Republican scene last summer. On the contrary, they have long been key elements of the party brand. So how are voters supposed to know where to draw the line?

Krugman also gives the god- awful American media a significant role in this devolution of right- wing politics.  With their focusing on the trivial, the "who would you rather have a beer with" inanities, the eliding of right- wing lies, the failure to come to grips with the evermore extreme drift of the Republican Party, the American media can share a great deal of discredit for what we're seeing today in the ascendance of the brutish on the right.