Great post. One suggestion: the GOP's degeneration started earlier than the eighties and nineties. This is really impotant to point out and remember, because her op-ed starts from the premise that the party has gone mad and become something ugly only very recently. That premise is false.

Conservative antipathy toward the state has its roots in the Civil War. Desegregation and the Civil Rights Act intensified that antipathy, and the growth of neoliberal thought allowed it to broaden into the unifying principle and guiding light of the entire party.

The GOP's constituents want to destroy the state because the overwhelming majority of them are racists who still think this is "their" country and still believe uppity brown people need to be put in their place. It's no accident that they're at their most frothingly insane when they're complaining about "political correctness," diversity, affirmative action, immigrants from "shithole"/Muslim countries and Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

Or rather that's why one branch of the GOP wants to destroy the state. The other branch of the party wants to destroy it because destroying it would further empower the already powerful and further enrich the already wealthy.

The first branch (the racists) have long been the GOP's voters. The second branch (the people interested in serving the interests of the wealthy) have long been their legislators. I'm pretty sure that has been the case for at least a couple of generations.

The rise of The Tea Party didn't fundamentally change anything. It just shifted the balance of power. The first branch gained the upper hand against the second and started to seek office in greater numbers. The Orange One is their Messiah.

So if all this woman wants is for her party to return to the "compassionate" politics of George W. Bush, all she's really asking for is that the party keep a little quieter about it racism and class warfare. Notice that she focuses overwhelmingly on the likeability and civility of the party/country and says almost nothing about GOP policies. I think that's all you need to know.

Don't let her pull the wool over your eyes. Trump has changed very little. He's just less tactful, less polite, and dumber than GOP office-holders tend to be.