All of them contributed (particularly Rush Limbaugh), but they weren’t pivotal the way Nixon and Reagan were. Nixon (well, his advisors technically) was the first one to really put forwards demonizing some minority group as an actual campaign strategy (in his case it was hippies and black people). It can’t be understated how much that concept has shaped the modern Republican party to the point where that’s almost the entirety of their modern strategy.
In many ways though, Reagan was the far more insidious of the two of them though. His long debunked trickle down economics that advocated for reducing taxes on the rich and corporations and eliminating regulations and oversight of businesses as a silver bullet to all economic issues not only set the economic policies of the Republicans, it even spread to the Democrats resulting in the useless “liberal” party we have today. The massive wealth inequality we see in America today is a direct result of Reagan, his policies, and his propaganda.
Those certainly aren’t the only causes of our current problems of course. You’ve got the people you mentioned as well as people like Rupert Murdoch, and things like the Citizens United decision as well as even older and more fundamental issues like our first past the post voting system, but Nixon and Reagan were significant turning points.
All of them contributed (particularly Rush Limbaugh), but they weren’t pivotal the way Nixon and Reagan were. Nixon (well, his advisors technically) was the first one to really put forwards demonizing some minority group as an actual campaign strategy (in his case it was hippies and black people). It can’t be understated how much that concept has shaped the modern Republican party to the point where that’s almost the entirety of their modern strategy.
In many ways though, Reagan was the far more insidious of the two of them though. His long debunked trickle down economics that advocated for reducing taxes on the rich and corporations and eliminating regulations and oversight of businesses as a silver bullet to all economic issues not only set the economic policies of the Republicans, it even spread to the Democrats resulting in the useless “liberal” party we have today. The massive wealth inequality we see in America today is a direct result of Reagan, his policies, and his propaganda.
Those certainly aren’t the only causes of our current problems of course. You’ve got the people you mentioned as well as people like Rupert Murdoch, and things like the Citizens United decision as well as even older and more fundamental issues like our first past the post voting system, but Nixon and Reagan were significant turning points.