The unhinging started happening long before Trump. The Donald is either the icing on the cake or the rebirth.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... state.htmlI saw the chaos coming in the early years of the Obama Administration, when the opposition was less guttural but just as strident; when the Republican leadership ordered its members to oppose every part of the president’s agenda; when they openly strategized that the path back to power required denying Obama a single moment of bipartisan cooperation—even during a national crisis; even before he announced what was in a proposal; even when he offered a health care plan that looked just like the Republican alternative to Hillarycare in 1993; a plan that was nearly identical to the reform that had just been passed by the Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.
I saw the insurgency take shape in the apocalyptic response to a piece of legislation so radical that it maintained America’s system of private health insurance. But this time, it wasn’t enough for Republican politicians to simply oppose Obamacare—to say, “I think it costs too much because of X” or “I don’t think it will work because of Y.” Instead, they were advised by party strategists to tell their constituents that Obamacare was “a government takeover” because “takeovers are like coups—they both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.”
What followed were the absurdist claims that Obamacare included death panels. We heard perpetually confused brain surgeon Ben Carson say that the bill was “the worst thing that happened in this nation since slavery.” We watched a Congressman interrupt the President of the United States during a live national address to call him a liar for claiming that Obamacare wouldn’t insure illegal immigrants—which, by every account, was 100 percent true.
Is it any wonder, then, that Tea Partiers took to the streets? Is it really so shocking that one of them waved a sign outside the Capitol which threatened gun violence if Republicans failed to stop the Affordable Care Act? And when the bill still passed with a majority of votes in both houses of Congress—a radical strategy that Obama learned about from the Constitution—is it terribly surprising that Tea Partiers were swept into power on a wave of anti-government rage that was stoked by Fox and Rush and millions of dollars in bullshit ads?
We saw what came next. Over and over, President Obama would try to negotiate with Speaker Boehner on taxes and spending. The negotiations would fail. And Official Washington would blame the two men for not recreating its favorite wet dream: Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, solving the world’s problems with a glass of whiskey and a handshake after a hard day’s work.
