A theory: What we're seeing now isn't a CHANGE so much as it's a showdown that we have avoided so far by never previously making the line in the sand THIS stark & obvious.
For example, hearkening back to the Clinton impeachment, it was pretty obvious at the time that everyone's opinion on it mapped to their usual political alignments. There weren't Democrats who thought it was a good idea or Republicans who thought it was stupid.
But, because it WAS a fundamentally trivial matter to get impeached over, it fit that "sports team" narrative everybody likes. You could argue about it at Thanksgiving without having things explode.
We got CLOSE to that line in the sand with GWB, but two things held us back: one, Democrats largely agreed with Republicans that 9/11 was truly an extraordinary circumstance, and were, at least at first, willing to make enormous concessions to Republicans because of that.
Remember this? That spike in approval after 9/11 translated to real political power. 
At the time, I felt ALMOST entirely alone in my conviction that GWB was the frack-up who had allowed 9/11 to happen rather than the glorious savior who was going to prevent it from happening again.
I watched GWB's massive historic failure become an enormous gift to him and the Republican party. In a single day he went from a POTUS of questionable legitimacy whose first year was marked by scandals like Enron, to Our Glorious Leader.
GWB RODE that wave into things like the creation of the Homeland Security state that gave us the atrocities of ICE, the (now admittedly a failure) war in Afghanistan, the Iraq Invasion, and a second term.
There was obvious cultlike devotion toward GWB, especially in the evangelical church, but it was easier to spin it as a 9/11 hangover -- people were legitimately traumatized by that day, right? Traumatized people don't always respond rationally.
The second reason GWB wasn't a trmpian line in the sand is that he wasn't a racist pushing an explicitly racist agenda crafted by white nationalists.
Like, if you pushed me to say something "nice" about GWB, it would've been "well, he's not as racist as his fanbase."
So, "support for GWB" didn't function as a proxy for racist & white nationalist beliefs in the same way "support for DJT" does.
Also, supporting GWB fit the "family values" narrative on the right 100% so he didn't expose their hypocrisy on the subject. He really IS a faithful family man who, as far as I know, has never sexually assaulted anyone.
All of that is to say: HAD GWB been openly racist, HAD he been a multiply divorced adulterer with a long history of sexual assault, I'm not sure it would have made any difference in the support he got from Republicans. But he wasn't. So we didn't know that for sure.
I mean... look at the Iran-Contra affair. Because it was THEIR SIDE doing it, Republicans thought it was just fine.
But Reagan himself went before the American people & apologized.
But Reagan himself went before the American people & apologized.
Republican malfeasance has a long history, but until DJT it operated under a cover of plausible deniability.
The shocking thing -- even to me -- is that apparently Republicans didn't NEED the plausible deniability. They could've just been straight out white nationalist crime lords the whole time.
Or, maybe Republicans USED to need the plausible deniability, until they had a critical mass of deeply brainwashed cult members created by Fox News & the evangelical church.
DJT has actually been thinking about running for POTUS for a long time.
I don't know if 2016 was his pick or Putin's, but it was strategically ideal. After a two-term Democrat, the Republican would have a generic advantage, the Democrat being black meant that angry racists were as motivated as they were going to get.
The Fox News demographic is scared & old but hasn't really started dying off yet. The evangelical church is obviously dying, but that just motivates those who remain in the cult to seize electoral power while they still can.
And don't forget the 2014 Republican Senate. 2014 was probably also the first election to be heavily influenced by online propaganda campaigns from Russia, white nationalists, & other right wing influencers.
Plus, DJT is ALREADY not physically up to the demands of the job, 2016 was probably his last shot. If you've been grooming him to be your champion since the 80s, 2016 probably WAS your last chance.
Anyway, it's extremely frustrating that the reflexively both-sides media doesn't seem willing to RECOGNIZE that any line has been crossed by Republicans, that anything has changed.
And I still don't know if that's the media being slow on the uptake, having a business model that resists change, having more stealth Republicans calling the shots than you might imagine, or something else.
The media were pretty terrible during the GWB years too, as I recall. Big Iraq War cheerleaders, they were. mediamatters.org/new-york-times…
Anyway, the showdown is happening now, and we all have to pick a side, whether we like it or not. NOT picking a side is defacto supporting the DJT international crime syndicate masquerading as a presidency.
