What would you say is the most telling effect of Trump on the American conservative movement?

The fact he has turned many of them from Republican conservatives to violent, nothing is my fault, everything is the democrats fault, spin wizards, believe all of Trumps lies, and disbelieve any and all truths, it’s my way only type thing, compromise is for the weak.

How far they have strayed from ‘true’ conservatism, to become a personality cult. They sold their principles to a demagogue.

When Trump dies, the conservative movement will be lost in the wilderness for a generation.

Their complete loss of empathy or any sense of a moral compass. Although this was going on before Trump too; thank you, Mitch McConnell.

Trump is the symptom, not the cause.

The DOW at over thirty thousand! Come on all of you Trump haters! Get a life!

@si3tech And would you trade that for millions unemployed and 300,000 dead? Q.E.D.

Did you know that a “DOW at over thirty thousand”....

- cures devastating climate destruction!
– provides healthcare for all, rather than thousands of people dying while others buy their second yacht!
– makes the human body immune to Covid-19!
– eliminates housing insecurity – especially during this pandemic!
– provides education and training to all, regardless of income and wealth!
– eliminates food insecurity!
– provides guaranteed parental leave!
– guarantees a woman’s right to control her body!
– provides families with childcare so they can work!
– treats drug use and addiction as a health issue, rather than criminal one!
– guarantees workers the right to organize in the workplace without fear of being fired!
– eliminates the need for an imperial foreign policy and state terrorism!
– eliminates state and private entities’ invasions of privacy!
– and more! much much more!

Come on people, get a life!

Here is another view that Rep/cons NEED Trump’s base to get re-elected so they will bow down and eat his lies and lick his boots.
They have no problem throwing their own values and ideals under the bus to accomplish this.

We already knew Republicans were scum—Trump just provided the microscope to show it in greater detail.

Republicans are fine fellers. Learned me an’ ol’ Virgil that we don’t need no sochlist heath care, fer one thang. And Ol’ J.B. Fatwallet pays nigh up to five dollar a week now. Even let Virgil set a spell for 10 minutes, when he cut off his thumb down to the saw mill last week. We can always pawn a few bazookas and AR 15s to git money to go see the doc anyway, Damn Demoncrats.

To me, the most telling effect is a complete lack of faith in government or in media to be truthful or unbiased.

@KNOWITALL what is causing those two mistrusts?

trump.

Most telling effect. The overshadowing of any valid political arguments or rational societal agenda conservatives may have by their willingness to love a piece of human garbage.

When you go over to your neighbors front yard to talk and complain about something and you brought your pet pig along to take a dump while you’re talking…that pig will never be President of the US again.

That we mostly forget the tea party movement. Also Sarah Palin. People have also forgotten to bash bush 2 anymore. Birthers have let go.

Well me ‘an Virgil taint forgot nothin’. We knowed Trump is the finest Prez since Ronald Reagan (Que Republican Tabernacle Choir). An’ we don’t care what that dang ol’ Stanley B. Uppity feller says. Nor that Lumberjack SQUEEKY feller neither.

Need to git ol’ Stanley B. Uppity down fer a Sunday go to Meetin’. Bet ol’ Pastor Billy Bob will make him see the light. Jaysus says it’s easier to stick a camel with a needle than fer a moocher sochlist to git into heaven. Done learned us that in his last sermon. Plumb right outta the New Republican Revised Bible.

The fact that he has shown the Republican party the path to the working class voter. The past few decades of Democrats abandoning unions to enjoy wine cave dinners with billionaires and pro-trade outsources has lost them a huge chunk of the electorate. Foreigners have been successfully scapegoated as the cause of the working class’s plight and now their focus is directed towards punitive policy against the impoverished instead of fighting back against board rooms that burn billions in stock buybacks and executive bonuses.

You’ve changed @gorillapaws, and it’s a little scary.
So many people have changed since trump became president, and it’s scary.

.

@Dutchess Disgust for both parties has changed many people in the last few years. More than likely my votes will be third party moving forward, wasted or not, morally and ethically I cant continue choosing between two poor candidates.

@Dutchess_III You’re right that I have changed. I used to think Obama was a good guy, that he actually wanted to do the right things and was being obstructed by Republicans and his naivete at trying to play nice with a party that was hell-bent on denying him any wins.

But after the leaked emails revealed just how corrupt the DNC insiders were, I started to realize that Obama never had any intention of accomplishing the things he pretended to. I realize that we essentially have one party in this country and it’s basically like pro wrestling where politicians appear to really slug things out in the public eye, but both sides punch their timecards with the same employers and pat each-other on the backs after the cameras are off. The media plays along with the spectacle. And many of you (on the left and the right) actually still believe we have 2 sides fighting it out.

The only mission they (DNC, RNC and the corporate media) have is to prevent populist economic policies—the ones that have always come about when the middle class has been crushed as our post-Reagan economy has been doing for decades. They do this through promoting right wing populism (build the wall), and cheating/sabotaging/slandering anyone promoting populist policies, ignoring unions, labor issues and progressive candidates, distract/divide with social “wedge” issues and identity politics and framing all conversations between extremist right and moderate right.

So yes, Trump did change me. I realized that Trump is the symptom, but that the DNC and party insiders are the cause that produced Trump in the first place. That we’re going to keep getting Trumps and more people like him (likely even worse) if we don’t address the DNC. I thought it was possible to do a hostile takeover, that such obvious failures would be met with a purging of the failed people and polices that got us Trump in 2016. That didn’t happen. The party doubled down and once again rigged the primary to defeat populism and progressive policy to put Biden on the ticket—a man who WOULD HAVE LOST if not for COVID. The DNC would rather have 8 years of Trump than a progressive in charge, and that should piss you off (and anyone else who hates Trump) as much as it pisses me off.

What leaked emails?

The Wikileaks emails where the DNC agreed not to let Bernie get the nod.

@gorillapaws doesn’t think the DNC is progressive enough to push GOP out of the way.

@Tropical_Willie And yet they did.

Not that I’m defending the DNC but I have sadly come to believe that we live in a quite conservative (small “c”) country.

I believe @gorillapaws ‘ synopsis essentially correct. Both the Democrats and Republicans serve the same masters and fight like hell to prevent any and all diversion from the primary directive—that the rich get richer. The key difference being: whereas the Democrats are burdened with at least the pretense of advancing the social agenda, their Republican counterparts are spared any intellectual requirement justifying the enrichment of their masters at the direct and visible expense of the rest of us. So diminished now is the cognitive threshold to current conservative “legitimacy” that the movement’s disciples literally believe the absurd party nonsense that those even worse off than themselves (minorities, immigrants, the indigent, etc.) to be responsible for the decline and growing impoverishment of themselves.