Day: December 17, 2025

What Happened To The Republican Party?

A very good and regular reader and commenter here on IST, Judy at https://judyt8630.wordpress.com/, she and I have been having a back and forth about the Republican Party and this is just an extension to that conversation.

When I was young I helped my grandfather with his efforts to get out the vote of Ike and the GOP…..those were the days when the GOP was truly a party of the people.

Their platform for that national election was something to be proud of…..

The individual is of supreme importance.

The spirit of our people is the strength of our nation.

America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.

Government must have a heart as well as a head.

Courage in principle, cooperation in practice make freedom positive.

To stay free, we must stay strong.

Read what the GOP stood for in that election…..https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956

Like I said it was a platform that every American could be proud of and vote for.

But then in 1960 everything started changing with in the the party….after 65 years of BS it has become the party of today…..so what the Hell happened?

This video is an interview with an ex-Congressperson on what has happened….

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world more libertarian—or at least more interesting—by challenging worn-out ideas and orthodoxies.

Today’s guest is Jeff Flake, former Arizona senator and U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and now head of the brand-new Institute of Politics at Arizona State University. Flake made national headlines in 2017 when he delivered a searing Senate floor speech announcing he would not seek reelection and declaring he would not be complicit in the “degradation of our politics” under Donald Trump and MAGA.

This is an article in Mother Jones….

In May, during an Aspen Institute conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the audience, “I want the Republican Party to take back the party, take it back to where you were when you cared about a woman’s right to choose, you cared about the environment…This country needs a strong Republican Party. And we do. Not a cult. But a strong Republican Party.” Her comments echoed a sentiment that Joe Biden had expressed during the 2020 campaign: If Donald Trump were out of the White House, the GOP would return to normal and be amenable to forging deals and legislative compromises.

Both Pelosi and Biden have bolstered the notion that the current GOP, with its cultlike embrace of Trump and his Big Lie, and its acceptance of the fringiest players, is a break from the past. But was the GOP’s complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern. Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections. Trump assembling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, QAnoners, and others who formed a violent terrorist mob on January 6 is only the most flagrant manifestation of the tried-and-true GOP tactic to court kooks and bigots. It’s an ugly and shameful history that has led the Party of Lincoln, founded in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery, to the Party of Trump, which capitalizes on racism and assaults democracy.

It Didn’t Start with Trump: The Decades-Long Saga of How the GOP Went Crazy

Just a few attempts to try and illustrate what has gone wrong with the GOP…..

What we know as traditional republicanism may be dead and gone and we can thank no other than Little Donny D-Nothing and his band of goons.

Any Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Too Pathetic For Words

First you know how some politicians have sign language presenters when they have a statement to be made….well Uncle Donny wants them gone….

The White House is fighting against calls to restore live American Sign Language interpretation at press briefings, arguing in court that such a requirement would interfere with President Donald Trump’s authority to manage how he appears to the public.

That position is laid out in filings from Justice Department lawyers responding to a lawsuit that seeks to compel the administration to provide real-time ASL interpretation for official events. While the government has not spelled out exactly how interpreters would undermine the president’s public presentation, the argument arises as the second Trump administration continues to dismantle policies associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion, a campaign that began in the president’s first days back in office.

The White House is fighting against calls to restore live American Sign Language interpretation at press briefings, arguing in court that such a requirement would interfere with President Donald Trump’s authority to manage how he appears to the public.

That position is laid out in filings from Justice Department lawyers responding to a lawsuit that seeks to compel the administration to provide real-time ASL interpretation for official events. While the government has not spelled out exactly how interpreters would undermine the president’s public presentation, the argument arises as the second Trump administration continues to dismantle policies associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion, a campaign that began in the president’s first days back in office.

(face2face.com)

Typical of a dictator wannabe…all eyes must be on him….no wiggle room.

Then there is the AG, Blondi, that wants to put bounties on ‘domestic terrorists’….

A new Justice Department memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi instructs the FBI to create a “cash reward system” to incentivize providing information against domestic terrorists. However, it also makes it clear that the targets of such domestic terrorist investigations will be “Antifa-aligned extremists,” including those promoting “radical gender ideology.”

“The FBI shall establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the successful identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations,” the memo reads. The memo, dated December 5, was leaked.

Bondi’s memo cites multiple laws that might be used to target domestic terrorism, but also lays out a clear vision for the priorities of the FBI in targeting suspected terrorists. Primary examples given are not the mass shootings and white supremacist actions that have plagued the nation; rather, the document names the “doxing of law enforcement” or the “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement.”

While it raises the specter of extreme viewpoints, they are not the ones that previous studies have linked most domestic terrorism to. Bondi’s memo suggests that the perpetrators are “certain Antifa-aligned extremists” and that their “animating principle is adherence to the types of extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.”

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/12/pam-bondi-wants-the-government-to-create-cash-bounties-for-turning-in-trans-equality-activists/

These people get more disgusting by the day….they are creating the American version of the Stasi (East German Security Forces)….this is most vile and insulting.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”