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Through a narrow lens like that, sure. I'm not saying Trumpism isn't something that has been building in the Republican party for decades. I often say this is their talk radio monster that they had been harvesting the energy of, finally escaping its cage and devouring the party.

Reagan was a bit before my time as an adult, so I don't have a solid opinion of the emotional content of his speeches. But I don't think it was a bunch of everything about the US is broken and wrong, and we need to tear it down. I feel like the cognitive dissonance was much more narrowly scoped to those specific social issues you're talking about.

Also note that conservatism is necessarily a product of the times. A position that was considered conservative in the 1980's is likely not conservative a generation and a half later.



> A position that was considered conservative in the 1980's is likely not conservative a generation and a half later.

If you want a really jarring example of this, watch Bush (Sr.) and Reagan debate immigration during the 1980 primaries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok

They sound like Democrats today. (And that's in the primaries, where people tend to be more party-line!)


we didn't have Fox News and its ilk drumming up panic over caravans back then.




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