60 Minutes: QAnon's corrosive impact on the U.S.

[wnylib]

6. Yes, Reagan reached out to people who

reacted against the civil rights achievements of the 1960s and 1970s and encouraged a backlash. That's what he meant in saying that government was the problem and not the solution. Government funds were involved in desegregation of businesses and schools. Reagan aligned himself with Jerry Falwell and the Christian Coalition to make the restoration and preservation of "core American values" a religious political cause. They defined those "core American values" as white Christian values.

From that point to the last president, Republican presidential candidates were mere figureheads to draw in the voters - Reagan with his developing Alzheimer's, Bush Jr who couldn't speak a coherent sentence, and the orange menace who rose to new heights of deliberate incompetence as the one that Russians described as low intelligence with a hyperinflated ego.

Bush Sr ran the nation behind the image of Reagan. Cheney did the same with Bush Jr. But Trump broke the Republican mold, refusing to be reigned in. Since he brought them votes and pushed their conservative agenda, they were willing to make a pact with the devil by accepting him.