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The GOP’s Original Sin
How Ford’s pardon of Nixon altered the destiny of the GOP and ultimately led to Trumpism
The Republican party was founded in 1854 as a reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, fearing the law would promote the expansion of slavery to the newly incorporated territories of the Union. Fundamentally anti-slavery, the Republican party also supported the gold standard, high tariffs, and high wages.
The XXIst century’s incarnation of the party hardly resembles its original definition. One could even say it is a perfect opposite of it. The party has moved from a centre-right socially-liberal platform to a staunch far-right, neo-liberal view of the world that promotes social inequality (by opposing taxation, unionisation, and welfare programmes), that preys on the weak and the other, and that hypocritically admonishes for a new form of puritanism.
Pushed to its extremes with the Trump presidency and the 2020 election, the GOP has relinquished any form of moral decency and embraced racism and misogyny. It has forgone its loyalty to factual reasoning and to truth itself, turning lying and deception into an effective communication strategy. For all intents and purposes, the GOP has become a cult.
When did this start? Can we point to one event in history that started the chain of events…
