Thread by @donmoyn

You can tell the story of the transformation of the Republican Party almost entirely through its embrace of conspiracy theories: Birtherism, QAnon, the Big Lie, and the Great Replacement Theory.

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1524746626090344449

* Embracing birtherism was key to Trump's rise
* Only 1 in 4 Republicans accepted that Obama was born in the US as late as 2016.
* Lots of evidence rebutting the conspiracy theory did not work, because believers are not working from an evidence-based world view.

*Pizzagate posters were embraced by the GOP mainstream
*QAnon beliefs are accepted by up to about half of Republicans
*GOP leaders increasingly use QAnon tropes like "groomer" to undermine public institutions like schools
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-qanoning…

It's not just that a majority of Republicans believe the Big Lie conspiracy theory that the election was stolen. They are picking primary candidates on that basis, which is why more and more of the people overseeing elections will be conspiracy theorists. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-th…

"Twenty-seven states will choose a secretary of state this fall, and in 17 of those states, at least one of the Republican candidates for the office actively denies that President Biden won the 2020 election." nytimes.com/2022/05/12/opi…

Much of the partisan gap in vaccination is a partisan gap in conspiratorial thinking, leading Republicans to become less willing to made medical choices to protect themselves.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/fox-news-is-…

Concerns about immigration exist everywhere. The idea that it is a deliberate plot by elites to undermine native borns is a conspiracy theory that has been transferred from white nationalists to the majority of Republicans via vectors like Tucker Carlson. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…