Short history of Republican conservatism

* Republicans are harvesting a half century of successfully cultivating conservative extremism.  It began with a gift of white supremacists from the Democratic party when Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.  This gave rise to the southern strategy implemented by Republicans beginning with Nixon.
* It continued with Reagan’s claiming that federal programs to help the disadvantaged in fact harmed them, that unions and labor laws harmed laborers, that environmental regulations were silly, that international family-planning providers shouldn't be allowed to discuss abortion, that job loss from out-sourcing was offset by lower consumer prices, that all weapons systems deserve development, that tax-rate cuts would increase tax revenues.  Despite citizens’ love of tax cuts, Reagan wouldn’t have won were it not for Iranian revolutionaries holding Americans hostage during the election year.
* Under propaganda from the congress and industry, Clinton abandoned affordable health-care ambitions and added conservative initiatives of his own, like free trade, welfare reform and bank deregulation.  The country prospered owing to our head start in the digital revolution, the resulting productivity rise and associated financial speculation.
* With the help of Gore-caricaturing comedians and a conservative Supreme Court, Bush II followed Clinton, promising further tax cuts which he implemented.  When the national conversation turned to stagnation in Afghanistan, to Karl Rove’s urging 9/11 be put to maximal political advantage, and to insider trading at Harken Energy, Bush squelched that conversation by assembling troops in preparation for possible invasion of Iraq, leading to America’s biggest crime since slavery.  Hillary Clinton’s email flaws and Benghazi failures pale beside Bush’s cynical and disastrous use of military discretion.
* Inevitably bank deregulation, fair-housing programs, perverse bond ratings and an economic slowdown gave rise to financial collapse near the end of Bush’s tenure.  This was addressed first by bank bailouts and later by mortgage relief, because rational tools for addressing the predictable collapse could not be produced prophylactically by a government of checks and balances.  Rational tools (shovel-ready federal projects planned and waiting, reversible automatic mortgage adjustments) are still lacking.  The result has been vast profits for real-estate and stock-market speculators at the expense of the working class.
* Election of a black president woke up and consolidated Republican conservatives as Second-Amendment/Tea-Party fanatics.
* For the past three decades, the above political dynamics were accompanied by the rise of hateful and dishonest broadcasters, Rush Limbaugh and his imitators, occupying the anti-intellectual space created by Reagan. Also during that time, Republicans have diligently supported their candidates for local and state positions down to school boards; and, at every opportunity, they have systematically redrawn districts to maximize Republican success.  We have sorted ourselves into politically homogeneous districts, some where progressives, intellectuals, environmentalists, futurists, humorists, even moderate conservatives must self censor.
* The result is Republican presidential aspirants unfit for national leadership.