To be fair, the entire Republican party seems to be all about blurring that line right now. I think the big challenge is Trump awakened something in folks who haven't been politically active in a very long time, and because they haven't been politically active, they aren't coming into politics with a clear ideology or set of policies they want to see passed other than "I like trump!" Which is probably a big part of why we just have a bunch of attempts at turning his presidency into a dictatorship and state-sponsored racism as the only clear policy trump actually cares about, and any policies that are directly enriching large businesses are just a case of those with deep pockets cozying up to folks in power with loose morals.

But let's be real, the Republican party hasn't been about conservatism for quite a while. They've definitely been coasting off of pure brand recognition with occasional injections of christofascism and state sponsored violence against minorities to help maintain their old jim crow roots. They've successfully cultivated a culture of being Republican, so they can do what they want policy-wise and still reliably win around a third of the elections in the country without resorting to voter suppression, and they can reliably win about half of the elections in the country with voter suppression

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

I think the big challenge is Trump awakened something in folks who haven't been politically active in a very long time, and because they haven't been politically active, they aren't coming into politics with a clear ideology or set of policies they want to see passed other than "I like trump!"

Yeah I wanna slightly amend that - I think their ideology is certainly "I like trump" but I think the reasons behind that are they see him as a big strong leader who validates and legitimises their prejudices - and will allow them to act on those prejudices. Suddenly the hate they felt for their immigrant neighbours, or their fear of gay people, whatever - suddenly they have a leader saying that's okay and he's now supporting their discrimination with military deployment in US cities.

This is how fascism happens - it's not always forced on a population, a lot of times a lot of people want it.

And the oldskool republican party was essentially a corporate mouthpiece.

Scary fuckin times, mate. The snowball is rolling down the hill and it's growing and it's accelerating.