Republicans who are mortified at the notion that their party will be represented by a neo-fascist megalomaniac in the fall are engaging in some "Republican Detachment Syndrome," in which they are pointing to him and saying, "we're not responsible for that." Jeet Heer in the New Republic begs to differ, particularly when it comes to neocons' rejection of Der Trumpenfuhrer:
If we wanted to boil down Trumpism to two historical precedents, they would be the Southern Strategy (which made the Republican Party amenable to Trump’s racism) and Bush’s war on terror (which primed the party to respond to fear-mongering, threat inflation, and bluster). As Matt Duss argued in The Nation, the 'inconvenient truth is that Trump has simply refined to its essence the style of discourse that the neocons helped develop.' With his promise of a unilateral foreign policy that would include re-occupying Iraq and bringing back torture, Trump is trying to take Bushism to the next level."So take protestations of innocence from Rethugs with a large block of salt. Trumpism isn't a new phenomenon, it's been boiling under the surface of right-wing Rethug politics for generations.
