when did the GOP begin to suck?

[sofa king]

25. Right you are.

With the death of Lincoln, his plans for a gentler Reconstruction died with him. So did Republican defense of civil rights. So did Republican fiscal responsibility.

U.S. Grant was one of our worst Presidents and the prototype for the scandalous, monolithic, entirely corrupt Republican regime was cast in stone.

By 1876, the GOP had graduated to election theft.

By 1893, they had wrecked the economy completely, twice.

The era of the "progressive Republican" lasted for the seven and a half years that Teddy Roosevelt was in office, and that is it. Four years after that, Roosevelt was running against Republicans and throwing the election to Woodrow Wilson.

By 1921, the Monopoly Republican was firmly entrenched, with its shills packing the Supreme Court, and the Republican party well on its way to wrecking the economy of the entire world in less than ten years.

After which they fought tooth and nail to reverse the public safety mechanisms which were put in place specifically to prevent Republicans from fucking things up again.

Which they successfully did starting in 1981 and steadily continuing to this day, when life is once again becoming solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short for all who fall beneath the contempt of Republican leadership--which is all of us.

Fear. Uncertainty. Racism. Corruption. For a nearly unbroken streak of 145 years. That is what the Republican Party has been since the day Lincoln died.