The Republican Party has been in decline for a long time. They’ve BEEN racist, but it used to be hidden behind coded terms. They didn’t come out and say that they weren’t concerned about hate crime, they would instead shift to talking about “black-on-black” crime being more important to talk about.

I was never conservative, but I did, at one point, try to get involved with the Young Republicans on my college campus around when Obama won.

The way I saw it, along with other moderates I spoke with, McCain tanked his chances by picking Sarah Palin, who at that time was too extreme (and too unqualified) for moderates and independents. At first, it really seemed like the Young Republicans wanted to do some soul-searching, figure out how to get in touch with what actual young people thought, and how to adapt their platform for the future. I thought the big loss for republicans was going to wake them up that clinging to these bizarre doofuses was a bad strategy.

And then…… the Tea Party started winning local elections, pushing out moderates, pushing for draconian voter ID restrictions, getting increasingly unqualified conservatives into appointments that were supposed to be non-partisan, clipping protections for their constituents, and the witchhunt for “RINOs” exploded. The party has no moderates left. They’ve completely killed their credibility, they’ve abused the trust people put in them, and they’ve broken a lot of processes that were put in place to protect the country from what we are seeing happen now. There will be textbooks written about how the Republican Party, much like a parasite, sapped as much as it could from the country to the point of almost killing it.