The white supremacist right is penetrating the mainstream right with increasing ease.
The Conservative Political Action Conference is the premier gathering of right-wing activists and politicians in America every year, and it serves as a bellwether for the direction of the conservative movement. This year Nazis showed up.
According to an NBC News report, “a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” (Hitler’s Nazi Party was officially called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”) The reporter of the article has video of one of them giving a “heil Hitler”-style salute in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place and of other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.
This is a critical frog-in-boiling-water moment for the right: The mainstream organs of American conservatism are apparently acclimating to Nazis in their pot. That this group was able to mingle with participants at a high-profile conference, wasn’t kicked out of CPAC, and wasn’t appropriately condemned is a sign of how contiguous mainstream conservatism has become with white supremacist politics today.
Lincoln and JFK? No, wait, the two Roosevelts? No, Reagan and Lyndon Johnson? Jefferson and Washington?
If you’re talking about Obama and Clinton, sure they were relatively charismatic compared to boring presidents like Bush Sr., Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. But, US history is filled with very charismatic presidents. Even Bush Jr. was fairly charismatic, that’s how he managed to rile up the country to take part in the “War on Terra”, and how showing up at ground zero and putting on a hard hat was so important for so many people.
The problem with Jeb Bush wasn’t George Bush Jr., it was Jeb Bush. He wasn’t very charismatic, wasn’t a deep thinker, wasn’t a leader, etc. The Bush name isn’t toxic among Republicans, it’s just that Jeb has even less charisma than Hillary Clinton.
As for what killed the GOP, it’s much more complicated than just two somewhat charismatic Democratic presidents:
So, when the GOP was at a period where it was trying to figure out how to define itself, Trump arrived and defined it as the anti-establishment, dog-whistle racist, christian theocratic party.
JFK was pretty charismatic in the same way Clinton was. Lincoln was not charismatic, he had a high pitched voice that sounded like a screaming kettle according to sources.
There’s obviously many factors in the GOP’s decline, I’m just saying that a big part of it was the psychological effect of seeing voters from demographics who they thought were locked in republicans being willing and enthusiastic to vote for democrats