Manliness

Even the most conservative and backwater CDU politician must watch what he's saying on national television or he will be out.

It was actually like this in the US until the late 70s. We certainly had more fundamentalist wackos, but they were kept under wraps. (Also, they themselves felt that getting mixed up in "worldly" politics would corrupt them - surprisingly smart for incestuous nut jobs.) You couldn't go around spouting about creationism or Jesus riding dinosaurs or you would be ridiculed.

So here's my totally biased take on what happened: Going into the 1960s the Democratic and Republican parties were ideological messes - not as clearly right/left as they are today (by US standards. Ultra-right and center-right by Euro standards, of course.) After President Kennedy's assassination, and thanks to the work of great Americans like Rev. Martin Luther King, a Civil Rights law was finally passed in 1964. At that time, the Democratic party in the "South" of the US was actually very racist and promoted the "segregation" (apartheid) system that the Civil Rights Act was meant to stop. This faction, (called the "Dixiecrats" as "Dixie" was a nickname for "the South") were angry at the rest of the Democratic party for supporting the Civil Rights Act.

The "country club/Wall Street" Republicans saw a political opportunity. They thought that they could win over the racist "Dixiecrats", gain their votes and keep them in check because they were "country rubes." This basically worked out in what the Republican party called the Southern Strategy. The "South" flipped from electing Democrats to electing Republicans.

There were some side effects from recruiting these racists. Co-mingled with their racism was the very strong correlation with being crazy religious. In order to win their votes, the Republican party gave these people more voice and political power. That resulted in these religious nut-jobs being able to spout about creationism, homophobia, banning all birth control, and their crazy-assed we-love-Israel-because-we-think-it-will-lead-to-the-death-of-all-jews-in-the-end-times-which-are-coming-very-soon influence on US foreign policy.

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