...and that's how I voted because of the "precise trajectory" part, but you can take it back to the 1952 Republican primary, where conservative Taft supporters aching to undo the New Deal were outmaneuvered by Northeastern moderates like Dewey to make Eisenhower the presidential nominee. The founders of modern Movement Conservatism, like then-27-year-old William F. Buckley, were livid at this "betrayal."
Between that and the 1964 "betrayal" of Republican moderates who voted for Johnson over Goldwater, they were set firmly on eliminating opposition, not stopping at compromises "nobody liked but everyone could live with." Their goals were too radical to make headway by that method. Their first target was the "quislings" of 1964, the Rockefeller Republicans. And by the mid-Eighties, they'd succeeded in wiping the RRs out.
Then, by 1992, two things had happened that scared the shit out of them. The first was the fall of the Soviet Union. Sure, they celebrated, but what were they going to do now, without the looming threat of The Evil Empire? The second was the Democrats nominating the Pro-Business, ok-with-the-death-penalty governor of a Southern "right to work" state, one who (with some differences) accepted the basic framework of Reaganomics the way Ike had accepted the framework of the New Deal. Someone who could get squishy weak conservatives who believed all that stuff about "small government" and "getting government off the backs of the people" to declare victory and go home, and not carry on to overthrowing all that stuff that sets "real conservatives" hissing like vampires with a cross thrust in their face: Social Security, Medicare, and other mainstream "big Government" programs.
So they went post-modern and left facts behind. They'd take control through bile, fantasy, and horseshit, where we are today.
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