Just as a few thoughts here. Many times people on here and elsewhere say or point to some quasi golden age a fairly short time ago when politics was rational and Republicans were thoughtful problem solvers.
I think this very misguided and really makes no sense of American history and certainly the last 50 years.
American politics has always been tribal and atavistic. It used to be before television its own spectacle, with parades, banners, campaign songs, and brutal attacks on the opponents. Some of the famous things like in 1840 was the "log cabin campaign" where William Henry Harrison and the Whigs ran a total content free campaign and campaigned falsely that he was born in a log cabin.
I also am completely puzzled at this notion that the GOP has been a serious party since 1964 or especially since 1980. When was this? In 1964, the GOP embraced the Southern Strategy and "movement conservativism." We now know that Richard Nixon, John Mitchell, and war criminal Henry Kissinger conspired against America and underhandedly wrecked peace talks in Vietnam in 1968 to get the presidency. Yes, Nixon did some things like the EPA and cancer research but he was usually being pushed by Ted Kennedy to do them.
The first campaign I followed closely was 1988 though I was too young to vote. I recall Bush and Atwater going after Dukakis as a child pornographer because he was in the ACLU and ran on Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance. We have had in my longish life campaigns on Monica Lewinsky, outright lies to get us into war, lies about tax cuts paying for themselves, etc. Anti-gay marriage campaigns in 2004 to get Ohio Electoral Votes.
I really am at a loss here. When has the GOP done anything for the American people in the past 50 some years?
Trump is NOT some black swan event. He is the logical conclusion to this. Where Trump is different and why this is so ugly is that the GOP preferred to used anti-gay and anti-minority terms as "dog whistles." We all knew what they meant when they said "pro-family." It meant anti-gay. We all knew what they meant when they said, "welfare queens." They meant black. Trump is doing away with that and rank and file Republicans love it. They go nuts at rallies when he attacks Mexicans by name and polls show they love it too.
So I am asking, is it time to take off the rose colored glasses and admit things were like this for a long time?
I take the first line from Lincoln's House Divided Speech:
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."