What was the Specific Event that Made You Realise that Republicans Are Evil?

[Manly_Scream]

And what point was it in your life?

I never agreed with Republicans. I found them ignorant, misguided, hypocritical and power-hungry during both of Dubya's terms even when I didn't know the full extent of what was going on (I wasn't old enough to vote in 2000 or 2004, so investing so much in politics was frustrating).

But it was during Obama's 2008 campaign, after he won, the reaction to the ACA, and the rise of the "Tea Party" did I have the epiphany that they are evil.

I don't feel that "all" Republican voters are evil, but for too many of them are, and the politiceans being evil are what makes them so dangerous.

[fun n serious]

1. Gore vs Bush election...

Stopping the vote count in FL.

My feeling were confirmed by the Bush presidency

Although, the way they heavily went after the Clinton's in the 90's was pretty horrific too. Massive lies and deception by that party

[DanTex]

47. Yup, that was the big one for me too.

The stopped votes from being counted in order to steal a presidential election. I was young at the time, so I'm sure they did evil stuff before that that I wasn't paying attention to, but the stolen 2000 election told me everything I needed to know about them.

[ananda]

49. Yeah, this.

Tom Delay and his henchmen, along with James Baker
and his lawyers, along with Lee Atwater and later Karl
Rove... all pure evil.

[elehhhhna]

103. Gingrich. Don't forget him.

[lapfog_1]

2. James Watt

and the "we don't know how many more generations there will be so we don't need to preserve nature for them" comment.

Followed by the 1990s and Newt persecuting Clinton over an affair (like almost every President before him had).

The final nail was the government shutdowns in late 1995 and late 1996.

I never got paid for that "forced vacation".

[Starry Messenger]

3. Reagan's response to the AIDS epidemic

Or lack of response, rather.

[democratisphere]

4. The iconic Lord and Savior of the redumbliCON party, Ronnie Reagan.

Pure unabashed evil.

[Foamfollower]

5. When Nixon claimed to have a secret plan to end the Vietnam War.

[TexasProgresive]

29. +1,000,000 and the final nail in the coffin

was the 1st time Rush Limberger sullied my car radio.

[2naSalit]

88. +1

[Lint Head]

6. When South Carolina's Sperm Thurmond became a Repubicon

because he was against Civil Rights.

[Wawannabe]

10. Thurmond

Makes my skin crawl to hear the name and talk about a fuckin HYPOCRIT!!!!!

[3catwoman3]

7. When Reagan...

..refused to support the Equal Rights Amendment.

[duncang]

8. During the Nixon years

That was the beginning for me. A different time. To me this is 1,000 times worse the watergate. But at the time he did the unthinkable for a president. And there were repub congress and senators who did about the same as what is happening now. Sticking their heads in the sand not wanting any real answers to what had happened.

[nikibatts]

17. Ditto

[FakeNoose]

57. A lot of us are baby boomers, so we remember Nixon

He was elected in 1968 on a "peace" ticket. Remember that?

I couldn't vote in 1968 because I was too young, but by 1972 when I first voted, I already hated him. Of course the Vietnam War was the worst thing that happened to our generation. I couldn't believe that people ignored the evil of Watergate - most of it was known even before the election. But people ignored it and voted for Nixon's 2nd term.

What an evil asshole he was, and everyone who worked for him.

But yes, Trump is 1,000 times worse and the Republican Party owns him. They're all going to sink for Trump's treason and stupidity. I hope this is finally the end of the GOP, I really do.

[Sculpin Beauregard]

64. I hope so too. And a bright, shining light

needs to be shone on the billionaire Koch, Mercer families engineering of the destruction of a true democratic process.

End citizens united.
Mental fitness screening for presidential candidates.
Civics education.

[Wawannabe]

9. Reagan and trickle down

Trickle down economics my ASS!
Been saying the rich gettin richer on the back of the working class since.

[Doreen]

11. Reagan

I can not remember what age I was but not old enough to vote. I however saw all of the mentally ill who had no family or survival skills being thrown out of mental institutions. I saw programs helping low income people being drastically reduced or cut out completely. Because he shut down women's shelters or cut the funds to them so deeply when my mother turned my father in for molesting me we had to spend the night with him in our house because they did not make him leave immediately and we had no place to go. I just saw the town I lived in go down hill in those 8 years and believe it or not we have not completely recovered from that and then we had the two Bush's in later that added. Our cut was so deep that the Democrat presidents could not pull us out. I live in a red county and the idiots keep voting Republican and they just do not connect the dots. I was a pre-teen and I connected the damn dots...oh yeah...with a learning disability to boot. That is when I learned that repukes are evil.

[KingCharlemagne]

12. Abu Ghraib and Falluja (2004-06) - nt

Last edited Fri Apr 28, 2017, 09:15 AM - Edit history (1)

[procon]

13. Reagan's efforts to kill Social Security in the early eighties.

Reagan also made cuts to Social Security Disability and Medicare. This affected both my grandpa, a WWI vet who only had one lung, and my grandma who had a work injury (before workers comp) that crippled her right arm. My grandpa tried to support them on the pittance he made as a 73 year old "paperboy". They depended on those programs, and Reagan hurt them, be made their lives harder, he humiliated them, and I never forgot. Never.

Reagan was the tipping point, but before him, there was Goldwater. That man was crazy scary.

[Hekate]

14. Where are you writing from, young voter?

Just a word from someone older: if I were you I'd focus my ire on the GOP rather than ordinary individual Republicans. It will make your life relationships a lot easier, for one thing.

I keep my neighbors in mind -- they are not evil people. The Republican Party and its politicians, however, are another matter.

Your interest in US politics is commendable, I suppose, but you write like someone who is living outside the country, so I am curious as to where.

Welcome to DU.

[WePurrsevere]

28. This...

"I keep my neighbors in mind -- they are not evil people. The Republican Party and its politicians, however, are another matter." I'd just add that some of their members, like the Kochs & Murdoch, and their propaganda spewing media mouthpieces are too.

I'm not big on generalities for groups of people so tend to look at them on a case by case basis. The Republican Party has changed so much, just in my lifetime, and they now control and abuse so much of the MSM that some people just don't seem to realise that it not the party of Lincoln, heck it's not even the party of Ike, anymore.

[enough]

37. I've been going on this principle for decades, and what you're saying has always worked

for me. For some reason I'm having a much harder time remembering this since Trump took over. I'm getting to where I can't seem to forgive the Trump voters for what they have unleashed. So thanks for your reminder, Hecate, from a very old voter.

[Manly_Scream]

70. I'm posting from Virginia.

I've lived here for 5 years and was born & raised in New Jersey.

I'm not going back to Jersey. For reasons that are not pertinent to politics.

I've never traveled outside of the U.S.

Here's the thing, although you're correct that I should be focusing most of my ire on the politiceans and not so much the voters, I don't think we need to let the voters off of the hook, and it's a mistake that Democrats make often (IMO)

Not every Republican is an "alt-right' neckbeard (the very fact that they've been allowed legitimize their evil with such a bullshit wannabe "counter-culture" term is troubling) but the fact that so many supposed devout Christians praise a man who so obviously not Christian simply because he attacks groups that they HATE shows you something's wrong here.

I've known 3 Democrat-haters in my life (my mother, a former supervisor of mine, and a 62-year-old friend.)

My mother didn't vote for Trump because in the end she pulled her head out of her ass, and realised that he was calling white nationalists to arms (even though I was telling her this for over a year) but she's always identified as Republican and believed in Raygunomix, and once told me "Hilary and Obama do not want me to be a millionaire! I should pay no taxes!" At the time she was recieving 200K.

She's also a narcissist with self-hating tendencies (we're "black-ish&quot

My ex-supervisor was this 50-something white guy who claimed to have some Native ancestry, had a disabled wife with MS who had 3 strokes and an autistic daughter, so suffice to say he recieved government assistance.

Yet he shat on Democrats and Obama constantly, and also immigrants and black men (though he had a thing for black women). He was ultimately fired for numerous reasons, one of them was using racial slurs toward our clients' customers.

As for my 62-year-old pal. She once told me Michelle Obama is trans and their kids were adopted. When I asked her where she got that from she said "She didn't know."

What I've noticed about VA as opposed to NJ, is that there SO MUCH generational teen pregnancy along with poverty that I did not see in NJ.

I'm talking not just 14-year-olds with babies, but 35-year-old grandmas, and 50-year-old great-grandmas.

A lot of downtrodden, despondent people who overcompensate with religion and the promise of a better afterlife instead of focusing on trying to improve their life, and focusing on "wetbacks and niggers" who have it worse, as they apparently "Should" therefore don't deserve anything.

While I don't find these people evil, I can't have relationships with them (my 62-year-old pal hates Republicans too).

Also, there are people in this country who want me dead, based on my DNA. It's not all, but it's too many.

[phylny]

111. Fellow Virginian here - from LI, NY but live right here in the heart of red VA.

So much teen pregnancy, grandma raising the baby, drug and alcohol use, and what looks like third-world living conditions in run-down mobile homes or falling-apart houses. Many in my community use WIC, SNAP, SS disability, and Medicaid, but they hate Democrats. I have a hard time making friends, because of the Trump love/Obama-Hillary hatred.

To answer your question, I was young during Watergate, but it was amazing to see, and I began my life-long distrust of the Republican Party during Reagan's administration, especially with his firing of air traffic controllers and busting unions.

[CrispyQ]

110. You're a better person than I am.

I've tried to keep politics from affecting personal relationships, but as the repub party gets more & more extreme, it's gotten more difficult.

How anyone can support a man who mocked a disabled person is beyond me. I thought Trump was toast with that, but no, he went on to insult just about every other group, so when the Access Hollywood tape came out, I wasn't as sure as everyone else, that that would take him down. And it didn't. When I read the 53% of white women voted for Trump, I thought, what the fuck? I have three republican friends, "who could never vote for Hillary Clinton," that I haven't spoken to since the election & I don't know if I will.

If one continues to support republicans, even though they want to cut Meals-on-Wheels & hot lunches for school kids while giving tax breaks to the rich & building up the MIC, that's kind of evil, imo.

[tinrobot]

15. Clinton Investigations/Impeachment

I lost whatever respect I had left during that time. They've done absolutely nothing to earn it back.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

90. This was the event for me too.

I was a teenager back then. The way Newt and the other Republicans attacked president Clinton was just ridiculous. They were trying to get a good president thrown out over an affair. I felt it was a personal/family matter and not one that concerns the public. That is when the Republicans started to get all crazy, off the rails in my opinion.

[SunSeeker]

16. Reagan demonized government for enforcing the Civil Rights Act.

Yup. Evil.

[JCanete]

18. That's going way further than I would typically. They do evil things, which I'm sure most of them

justify to themselves in the name of good. Then there are sociopaths, and I'm sure more than a handful with an R after their name, but they aren't "evil" either, they just literally have no empathy for others.

As a low information citizen, I realized something was off at some point after 911.. just about everything I was hearing in the media seemed wrong. None of the rhetoric seemed to gel with what I thought I knew about our nation and its values...thank you public schools back when there was at least some modicum of civics being taught in the class-room...

I caught an O'reilley interview with Ben Stiller and watched how he totally manipulated it, framing his "no spin zone" as such, but then asking questions in voice-over that couldn't be responded to by Ben as meta-commentary on the interview. Then in that same segment he went to an interview with Jeanine Garofalo, and I kind of fell in love. She called him out for being a bullshit artist who spins everything. After that I found out she had a show with Sam Seder on Air America and became a junky of all of them...Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartman, Rachel maddow, Stephanie Miller, etc.

Anyway, I guess to answer the question, it was Hannity and his "liberal" sidekick first, and then O'reilley, who opened my eyes most memorably about something being way way way fucked up. And as I got acquainted to other news I was even more offended by CNN's absence of not only fact checking, but opinion itself.

[Manly_Scream]

72. Having zero empathy for others

Is the seed of evil.

Rush Limbaugh slandered a college student with ad hominem attacks of "whore/slut" instead of civilly disagreeing with her with valid points.

Is that not evil?

Republicans tell rural white America that their whiteness, and Christianity makes them special, more derserving and "real" Americans as opposed to "others who just want a handout", so they can continue to screw over everyone, including their own voters who they superficially praise.

A lot of these voters continue to have children in their teens from generation to generation, because abortion rights, and sexual education in schools is "not Christian"...Afterall, their powerful all-knowing Christian politiceans agree.

Is that not evil?

Serious question : for you, where do you draw the line between "no empathy" and "evil"?

Is it direct 1st degree murder with one's own bare hands?

If so, I can see your point, and while that may in fact be the ultimate evil, manipulating the masses into giving you power under the guise of Christianity and "family values" while families have less opportunity and progress, rates very high on the evil scale for me.

[JCanete]

85. having 0 empathy for others could literally be a medical deficiency, at which point, I start to

think of people more as forces of nature than evil actors, because they aren't simply deciding to not give a shit. They physically don't have the capacity.

Being capable of empathy and not having it is another matter, and forming a personal narrative that most allows one's self to pursue his own selfish desires IS what I do count as the closest thing to evil...but it is a condition of evil, I'm not so sure that at the root, we have an evil person. How a person develops the tools he or she does to survive, assuming we are talking about culturally and not clinically sociopathic tendencies, has to do with what has been learned...what lessons a person has taken during upbringing-- from his or her environment-- that developed this particular set of survival skills, and of course that is a mix of experience and genetics, but in both cases, its not like we choose our own genetics or upbringing. Which is why I'm not quick to label people evil. Maybe psychotic, maybe sociopathic, maybe murderous...etc. I can see just using "evil" to define people engaging in evil actions, but I think there's a lot of baggage there and it allows us to think of people kind of biblically and black-and-white, as fully conscious choosers of the dark side...and thus, foregone. The dark side is in the bible right?

[NBachers]

19. Nixon opportunistically getting elected on the heels of Bobby Kennedy's assassination.

[BlueMTexpat]

20. Richard Nixon

It has only gone downhill from there insofar as Republican Presidents are concerned. But Trump has so far been the nadir.

I do not believe that ALL Republicans are evil. But I do believe that those Republican politicians who are currently in office have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

[get the red out]

33. I remember

My Grandfather thought Nixon was the most wretched man on Earth, and he had lived through the Great Depression. I was a kid, but his contempt for the man sticks in my mind.

[Hamlette]

21. 3 stories from former republicans and when they switched.

When Reagan started talking about "limited nuclear war". My dad finally made the switch.

The purple heart Bandaids at the republican convention making fun of Kerry was the last straw for Andrew Sullivan.

When they spied on a family who testified about the need to keep health care for kids and complained that they couldn't be poor because they had granite kitchen counters. John Cole made the switch.

I'm sure these are simplistic answers in all three cases but these were the things that I identified as pushing them over the edge.

For me, I'd say Reagan. We held an impeachment ball the night he was inaugurated. Primarily his stand on education being bad.

[Tortmaster]

22. I was very young but still learned everything I could ...

... about Watergate. I thought that Nixon and his henchmen were nefarious, but I also thought they were just a bad lot. Reagan was totally disagreeable to me, but I thought he was just misguided. The way the GOP went after the Clintons made me sick to my stomach. GWBush and his war to atone for his father really drew my attention.

But it was the Republicans after 2008, when they began to lie about everything, and then they went all in on Voter Suppression and killing the Medicaid Expansion. There were no good arguments for that, only evil. And they were all in lock-step.

[malaise]

23. Tricky Dick Nixon

Watergate

[Skittles]

24. Anita Bryant

I remember thinking, jeez, gay people do not bother me but SHE sure does.....I realized right then and there whose side I was on, and that "side" made me a solid Democrat

[kydo]

25. AIDS

Not just the raygun's in-actions, but a good chunk of that lot's as well. Also the "Just say no," to drugs bull shit. That party just kept on getting worse. Now they have totally sunk to the bottom, actually below that even, and given us the orange mutant. Fuckers!

[Skittles]

26. that was hard

I think all of us back then knew people who died of AIDS, while Reagan refused to even talk about it - for YEARS

it makes me SICK to hear people wax on about what a "great president" he was.....his shtick was making greed and ignorance fashionable......he SUCKED

[no_hypocrisy]

27. Nixon -- Kent State specifically

A President who sent the National Guard to stop protests against the war on the campus of a major state college, to stop it any way necessary.

Four dead in Ohio . . . . . . and no republican criticized him for his action.

[jberryhill]

30. Nixon

[get the red out]

31. Katrina

Seeing people in New Orleans abandoned, a woman begging for water afraid her infant would die, I have never gotten her image out of my mind. How could that be America? Add to that the whole Iraq war and all that death and destruction based on a lie.

[machoneman]

32. For me? At their birth....

They are all f*cked in the head at birth. Trust me on this one!

[k8conant]

34. I think Goldwater was the catalyst...

although we sometimes said that Johnson delivered on what AuH2O promised (at least in Viet Nam).

From 1964 on, in any case, I generally assumed that the Republicans were wrong, although not necessarily evil and back then not even all sleazy and devious. Of course, the Democrats had been going through some rough spells too--and it was good for the party that the Southern Democrats turned Republican if they didn't see the light.


I think the election of the demented B-movie actor in 1980 was definitely a turning point in the history of civility in politics. Reagan was a former union president (Screen Actors' Guild) who became the biggest union-buster during the PATCO strike in 1981: See "The Strike That Busted Unions" By JOSEPH A. McCARTIN, AUG. 2, 2011,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/opinion/reagan-vs-patco-the-strike-that-busted-unions.html

That portended the true rise of the evil Republicans since: the elite and would-be elite who despise anyone who stands for civil rights and social justice and ordinary human decency.

[dembotoz]

39. In many ways yes, but Ford was a genuine good man... And then Ronnie

Ending the war on poverty...which despite Viet Nam is why I still respect and admire lbj
That and civil Rights

[Freddie]

43. Ford was a good man, agreed

So was Bush the Elder. Certainly didn't vote for him or agree with him on everything, but he had a good heart IMO. Still love Barbara. Shame about their son.

[k8conant]

93. I agree with you about Ford and LBJ...

those were strange times.

[Donkees]

35. November 22, 1963

[sharedvalues]

36. GWB tax cut

If I had been around then - Iran contra and Reagan's January surprise probably would have done it.

[sharedvalues]

38. I also watched Fox News poison people's minds

Starting in 1996 when Fox was founded.

Not a very sudden single event but watching even a little of Fox made me realize Republicans are evil

[madokie]

40. Vietnam

tricky dick, Watergate

[KingCharlemagne]

48. All due respect, but Dem LBJ gave us Vietnam (or at least its

escalation). Tricky Dick gave us Cambodia (illegally).

[FakeNoose]

63. History says Vietnam problems began with Eisenhower

It was a holdover from the Korean War, and the belief (at the time) that if one country became Communist then they all would fall like dominoes. It wasn't a war yet, but Eisenhower sent troops as "advisers" to Vietnam back in the 1950s.

Kennedy had planned to bring the troops back out because it looked bad and he didn't want any more involvement. Sadly Kennedy was assassinated before he could do that. Then Johnson, yes we all know what Johnson did, and that's why he never had another term.

So the 1968 election had Hubert Humphrey as the Democrat who was forced to support Johnson's war record, even though he was personally against the Vietnam War. Ironically Richard Nixon the candidate was free to criticize the war and promise that he would end it if he were elected. Yes Nixon ran on a peace ticket in 1968, and he won the election.

Once Nixon was in office he immediately expanded that war, and sent more troops and flew raids into Laos and Cambodia. (The United States had never declared war against any of these countries.) The horrible truth is that the Vietnamese people should have been left alone to decide for themselves if they wanted to be Communist or "pro-Western." We just couldn't keep our noses out of their business. They had a democratic election and voted for the communist leader Ho Chi Minh to be their President.

It was a horrible time, so misguided, so avoidable. Our baby boomer generation paid a terrible price for those mistakes.
Yes LBJ was a hawk and he had bad intel, but most of the VN casualties should be blamed on Republicans.

[KingCharlemagne]

98. Hate to burst your bubble, but they actually began with the little

haberdasher and inveterate anti-Commnist from Independence, MO, the Dem Harry S. Truman. There was no law that required Truman to green-light DeGaulle's invasion and reoccupation of Vietnam after 1945. Truman did it to secure DeGaulle's tepid cooperation in the nascent Cold War against the USSR.

Historians of the era are divided on whether JFK planned to end our involvement in Vietnam after his presumptive re-election. The most I think it is safe to say is that JFK was trying to leave his options open on US involvement in Vietnam after November 1964, following the military coup in 1963 that deposed the Diem brothers. JFK might have withdrawn, true, but he might also have escalated. Or he might have chosen to muddle on with some version of the status quo.

Moral of the story: Vietnam was a bi-partisan cluster fuck.

[FakeNoose]

113. OK - so we all agree it wasn't LBJ n/t

[Vinca]

41. It must have been during Nixon, but it's gotten much worse since then.

Right wing, hate radio/television has pretty much ruined the country and I don't know how we get back to being civilized.

[Freddie]

42. The day of Reagan's inauguration

Totally settled it for me.
I was 22 and had a couple days off work to get my wisdom teeth out. As the nurse was putting the IV in my hand I heard the office radio..."and today the hostages in Iran will be released." I said, "yeah, that's really a coincidence" and promptly went out from the anesthesia. Evil motherf*cker pulled strings with the enemy to make Carter look weak. That moment clarified it - they are evil personified.

[superpatriotman]

44. Iran-Contra

Hostages released right after Saint Ronnie takes office? Right. Nothing to see here.

[DURHAM D]

45. Nasty Lying Spiro Agnew

[FSogol]

46. Years ago, I saw an interview with some Republican congresswoman and she talked

about how the government wastes money and how it impacted people's lives due to the taxes that went to pay for it. She made a lot of sense until she picked the most wasteful program (in her opinion) and it was the free lunch program for school kids.

Here was some rich white women, how never missed a meal in her life, wanting to eliminate a cheap govt program that did so much good. For that point on, I knew that I had nothing in common with that shortsighted, selfish crowd. I truly believe Republicanism is a mental disease. I hope that one day those people can be cured or at least treated.

[moondust]

50. Reagan.

Attacking "big government" and unions. Government and collective action were the two main avenues working people had to fight back against the grinding exploitation and massive inequality of "economic royalists"/quasi-slaveholders; Reagan went after both. He (and Thatcher) ushered in globalization, financialization, trickle-down nonsense/"greed is good" and the rest is history.

[Freddie]

60. My town has a "Ronald Reagan Drive"

a street built when the school district opened a new school and the repugs in local government had to christen it. Pisses me off to no end especially as an insult to teachers at the school, considering Reagan's record with unions.

[PJMcK]

51. Showing my age

When Barry Goldwater was nominated, I was in elementary school but I remember thinking he was a bad man who didn't represent the America I was learning about.

Richard Nixon sealed the deal, however.

[JustAnotherGen]

52. Growing up

The first time my dad threatened to make me go live with the Reagans and told me I was acting like a little Republican.

That - and the nightly one-sided shouting match at the CBS evening news for 8 years (1981 to January 1989)

[onlyadream]

53. White water

I was busy in college not paying attention to politics, but when Clinton was elected and this investigation was the republican only interest, I noticed. It just didn't seem right. Fast forward to watching Rush Limbaugh on TV and his binary view of the world from a white man perspective made me take notice again. Then 9/11 happened, and FOX news went nuts beating the war drums. I was done at that point, completely. The Iraq war was when I realized how absolutely evil they were. I knew that they weren't letting the inspectors do their jobs, that was obvious. They had an agenda.

Edited to add the stolen election and hanging chad BS.

[bagelsforbreakfast]

54. Realizing they are all Ed Meese at heart...

Know-nothing fascists.

[mitch96]

55. When my old man told me about

how the republicans tried to over throw the government (Roosevelt principally) with an army of 500,000 and General Smedly Butler... He ratted on them and avoided a coup.. Roosevelt leveraged that into the Social Security act.. Never let a crisis go to waste...! All in the congressional record
http://www.eclectica.org/v1n1/reviews/wharton_plot.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

I thought my father was spinning some lies till I got older and heard a BBC re account of the incident.. Grand daddy Bush was involved along with many prominent ReThugs...

"Those who do not learn the past are condemned to repeat it."

m

[Historic NY]

56. When I found out Republicans would take money out of my pocket before I could...

I grew up in a political family, that's when both parties usually got along. Right now I'm the only registered Democrat surrounded by Republicans in a job they appoint. A bunch of them used to be Democrats decades ago.

[Javaman]

58. nixon. nt

[onecaliberal]

59. There have been several moments but the Iraq war lie and the minority leader of the Republican Party

Coming out publicly saying they hoped the President of the United States would fail. Knowing full well that meant bad things for the American people. That cemented it for me. There thousamd things since that have shocked my consciouns. This country is full of really awful people.

[NickB79]

61. Climate change denial. nt

[LeftInTX]

62. I blamed Nixon on Nixon, not his party

I was in high school, so kinda naive.

However, Reagan and his platform and his supply side economics, anti-union, cutting services, greed is good. The policies were all Republican and all evil.

[CanonRay]

65. When I found out Nixon wrecked the Viet Nam peace talks

by secretly offering South Vietnam a better deal. Thousands died because of that. It was treason.

[Aristus]

66. Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell in 1992.

Before that time, I had been a pretty solid Republican, mostly because I was young, and didn't know anything about politics.

I was heading into my last year on active duty in the Army. I was stationed at Fort Knox, and due to my enthusiasm for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, made a number of friends in the gay community in Louisville, Kentucky.

I suppose that made me a typical Republican, in that I either didn't care about, or was opposed to a certain issue until it affected people I loved. Look how many Repubs moderated their stance on gay rights when a family member came out.

From that time until the GOP took over in 1994, I was uncertain about my political views. After '94's Election Day massacre, I realized that I'm a liberal, had always been in one form or another, and always would be.

[Iggo]

67. I've known they were bad people since the Reagan administration.

ADD: I don't play the Good vs Evil game. To me, the opposite of "good" is "bad." People suck. Most people don't suck most of the time, and to my mind those are good people. People who DO suck most of the time are bad people. The people who call themselves conservatives are very very bad people.

[politicat]

68. 1 - Joe Arpaio's support in Maricopa county and 2 - whitewater/lewinsky/hair on fire

I grew up in AZ and got my Bach and master's at ASU. Arpaio (which autocorrect wants to be rapacious, so clearly autocorrect isn't stupid) was elected the year I officially started college (I had most of my AA between AP tests and community college classes during HS) and from the first, it was clear he was going to cost the county a lot of money and perpetrate a lot of human rights and civil rights abuses. That it took more than 20 years to get him out says a lot about Maricopa county, and nothing it says is flattering.

I figured out in that first year that people who supported Arpaio bore a streak of self-satisfied sadism. I GTFO'ed from Arizona as soon as I could and I do not go back if I can avoid it. I never got arrested, but I got harassed by the town cops for all of the remaining time I lived in that jurisdiction.

Then I spent a year watching a bunch of serial liars, adulterers, sexual harassers and financial fraudsters howl with rage over a land deal that lost money and a stupid, but private, misbehavior, while destroying a young woman just because they could.

Those four years made a me a liberal and a progressive.

Funny story -- I GTFO'ed to Colorado Springs, the belly of the beast of fundigelical conservatism. It was a vast improvement.

[Wounded Bear]

69. Outing Valerie Plame...

The Reagan deal with the Iranians to keep the hostages until he got elected comes a close second.

[MountCleaners]

71. High school - 1980's

I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic high school. When I realized that many Catholics supported Reagan in spite of his foreign and domestic policy - all because of abortion - I realized how racist, callous and greedy they were. I simply never bought the lie that what is being aborted is a "baby". I was a teenager and felt like all they really wanted to do was control young women. So it's personal experience.

I grew up admiring black leadership, and to see all of these urban Catholics ignore the criticisms made by black leadership, all because of the myth of "baby killing", convinced me that they were racist and more pro-death than "pro-life".

[haele]

73. Nixon. The Dulles Brothers. Lee Atwater. Donald Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney.

The concerted effort during Reagan's administration for normalization of cruelty and cynicism, turning the ideal of governance into a business venture.
The republican's embrace of the term "Human Resources" and idea of Citizen as Consumer. They changed the notion that Government and government employees was no longer a common resource for citizen's safety, wellbeing, and long term social insurance, but the citizenry had became "customers" who had to be able to pay for services.

Haele

[Orsino]

74. No one thing.

They just seem to appear on the wrong side of nearly every possible issue, to talk only with fake data about fake concerns, and for decades they have championed nothing good.

There are exceptions here and there on single issues, but it's as though they are running to rule some alternate universe.

[lpbk2713]

75. The Y2K Florida sElection.

There were too many acts of deceit coming from too many directions for it
not to have been a closely orchestrated theft of the voters' right to choose.

[mvd]

76. Reagan's election

Confirmed they only exist to help the rich get richer on the backs of the poor and middle class.

Other things happened to increase the degree of evil. Bush v Gore, the Iraq War, blocking Garland, and Trump himself.

[stonecutter357]

77. oliver north !

&ytbChannel=ZeroEightyFour

[vlyons]

78. Nixon's invasion of Cambodia and Watergate

Followed by Reagan firing the air traffic controllers, and his star wars sabre rattling, withholding funds for AIDs research. And all along GOP opposition to abortion choice for women. The list is longer, but those are the biggies.

[Moostache]

79. 9/11 and the march to war that followed...

I will never forget the day of the attack discussing it with a friend who was immediately convinced that morning that we would be going to war...and when I asked him "against who, exactly?" he said "terrorists"... That exchange remains burned into my memory vividly to this day...

[mvd]

80. If 9/11 is what I suspect, it would increase their evil by even more

But they are plenty evil even with just negligence.

[oasis]

81. Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. GOP HYPOCRISY on parade. nt

[unblock]

82. Have they done anything to redeem themselves since McCarthy?

Strom Thurmond filibustering civil rights?
The southern strategy?
Watergate?
Pardoning Nixon?
Killing carter's hostage deal?
Reagan's criminal inaction on aids?
Iran-contra?
Foxnews lies and propaganda?
Hate radio?
Stealing the election from gore?
Lying us into a disastrous war in Iraq?
Stealing the election from Hillary?

I'm willing to say Ike wasn't half bad, but they've been horrible since then.

[yankeepants]

83. Reagan. Just Reagan.

[underpants]

84. Mine? 1992 Dem Convention Jesse Jackson's "That's not America" speech

I was watching in an Army barracks in Germany. Living in basically the Republican vision of things - shut up, do what you're told, know your rank/place- and I became a Democrat that night.

[Doc_Technical]

86. 1964

Their opposition to the Civil Rights Act.

[ProfessorPlum]

87. The book "The Clothes Have No Emperor" by Paul Slansky

An amazing summation of the Reagan years. Once you see it all together like that, the scales fall from your eyes. Plus, it is hysterically funny.

[ornotna]

89. When Dewey claimed victory over Truman

And it was a lie.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

91. Watergate

Yes I'm old enough to remember it.

[nini]

92. When I was a kid and my grandma told me about the Depression

Then what FDR did and how the repubs fought anything that would help the average person.

[inanna]

94. Yeah. In my opinion it ALL goes back to FDR and the New Deal.

Totally agreed.

[Initech]

95. Bush Vs. Gore and the 5-4 SCOTUS decision that followed.

It made me realize how crooked and evil the GOP was - and that if they didn't win, they'd steal. And they stole all right..

[CottonBear]

96. The Vietnam war, Nixon, Agnew and Watergate. N/T

[BainsBane]

97. I don't believe Republicans are evil

I think there are some decent ones. I disagree with most of what they stand for, but that doesn't make them evil.

[roamer65]

99. Iran-Contra scandal under Raygun.

[KingCharlemagne]

100. A great thread. Sincerest hat tip! - nt

[L. Coyote]

101. My Dad told me back in the 1950s. I remember it as if it was yesterday,

even where we were driving down a road, where i sat in our 1954 Plymouth. It was quite an enlightening political lecture on class warfare.

[katmondoo]

102. Ronald Reagan

[Docreed2003]

104. I'll never forget the summer of the Iran-Contra hearings...

I was a boy, and, when I was out of school, I spent my summers with my grandparents, who lived on the hill next to us. My grandparents were FDR Dems and were watching the hearings religiously and I'll never forget them having the TV blaring while I ran in and out of the house. I remember Ollie North in his uniform...I remember the outrage of my grandparents...and I remember the cicadas. It was the best summer of my childhood and I vividly remember my grandfather saying "The next time the cicadas come...I won't be here with you". He was in his late 80's then. I learned that summer about the absolute villany of the GOP and the short circle of life.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

105. Newt Gingrich and his "Contract On America"

Bill Clinton and Hillary might not have been perfect (nor were they the left-wing demons that the right made them out to be), but I was continually disgusted at how the Republicans hounded and demonized them and prevented them from doing much good, which set a pattern of obstructionism that they refined and expanded for President Obama. They didn't, thankfully, get a lot of their agenda through in the 1990's and even under George W Bush, some of their worst initiatives never got signed into law but their general incompetence and misguided ideas killed a lot of Americans, ruined the economy, and has stymied progress in a lot of areas- not the least of which has been in the field of science. Because of their ongoing demonization of Hillary and embrace of Russian collusion in our electoral system, at least another 4 years of progress for our country is down the drain. The only consolation about Trump being POTUS is that he and Republicans are utterly incompetent and are only succeeding in making themselves massively unpopular in a very short amount of time.

[AngryAmish]

106. When the first George Bush killed LBJ

and strutted around the funeral bragging he did it.

[Takket]

107. The 2000 recount

They sued left and right at ever turn to stop counting. Basically they "ran out the clock" to use the football term, and then the Supreme Court said "oh well, we have the certify the election by this date so, who gives a fuck if no one actually finished counting. Bush won".

and the country has NEVER been the same since. Gore would not have ignored the bin laden memo because he was on vacation on his ranch, i firmly believe 9/11 would have been stopped, and the country would look a lot different now (for the better)

[Turbineguy]

108. When Reagan said homeless people were homeless

because they like fresh air.

[Boxerfan]

109. What really cemented it-permanent style-Katrina.

I had a political awakening in 2004-kindahard to ignore by then. But I realize now I've always been a liberal.

But Katrina told me they were willing if not gleeful-to watch poor people die. And facilitate that if possible.

Now my standard Q for a Repuke is "name 1-one-policy that R's have made into law that helps the average working person". There are none so that is that for an argument.

[lovemydogs]

112. Reagan winning the Presidency

[pressbox69]

114. I've known for decades but

lately it was when Ted Cruz sucked up to fake #45 after calling Mrs. Cruz a dog and his old man the guy that murdered JFK. Republicans are born without spines and they share the same tiny brain.

[Blue_true]

115. Many things over the years. I voted for one republican

when I was in college because she was a consumer advocate, but then she caught the republican rightwing flu, I have religiously voted only democrat since.