It was a natural and gradual progression, with each successive Republican president setting a lower and lower bar. Nixon definitely had a conscience, and did some good things during his tenure in office, but, due to deep seated personal issues, felt he had to cheat to win re-election, and abuse his presidential power, and so he wound up resigning right before he was to be impeached. Reagan was the great communicator, and a likeable charmer, but he opened the door to the corporate looting of America with his voodoo trickle down economics. At that time, America was in such good financial shape that nobody really cared or noticed the looting that was going on. Poppy Bush was disciplined and conservative, but did some shady things behind the scenes. And Baby Bush was the first president that was an ignorant buffoon and a comedian's dream - but even he and his administration had a conscience, and governing standards, even though he led us into a costly war based on lies, with the help of Darth Cheney. Baby Bush was actually the pioneer for Trump, who initially tested out how far he could get away with lying to the American people, how far he could push the envelope in violating the norms of good government. And in the background were escalating electoral shenanigans - gerrymandering, ID laws, vote purging, and the like, because, frankly, there was a massive sea change in the electorate going on, with America becoming less white, less conservative, more ethnic - all electoral factors that lean in favor of the Democrats. And finally, the underlying electoral imbalance got so bad that the Republicans felt that they had to call in outside help - in other words, the Russians - to win in 2016. And the natural, gradual downward progression of Republican presidents finally gave us Donald Trump, who is more of a mob boss than a president, and who has violated and broken all the laws, rules and norms of good governing. Right now, we swear that NO Republican president could ever be worse than Donald Trump, but who knows? The next guy could be just as devious and criminal, but a lot smarter. Looking back on things with 20/20 hindsight, it is theoretically possible to argue that, instead of resorting to electoral shenanigans, Republicans could have, and should have, done the hard work of reinventing conservatism and the conservative message to have a broader appeal, ethincally and racially speaking, but instead, they took the easy way out, through electoral shenanigans and voter suppression.
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