Back in 1992, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", a book that intended to improve communications between genders, was released. The central theme of the book was that men and women inherently saw the world so differently that it was often hard for them to understand each other. Personally, I think a new version of that book could be released now, entitled "Conservatives are from Mars, Progressives are from Venus" because of the deep, often fundamentally different ways that conservatives and progressives see the world. As anyone who's tried to argue with someone with different political views, agreement, especially in the age of Trump, is hard to find.
One big difference I see in the two different political mindsets is that conservatives seem to assume that power is their right; with the conservative image being one of the strong, aggressive person (usually a man) in charge, their assumption of power seems baked in. Imagine if there were 2 recent Democratic presidents that won the White House while losing the popular vote. The howls of "illegitimate!" from the right wing media would de deafening. But when it happened to George W Bush and Donald Trump, they both swaggered into office claiming that they had a mandate.
This lust for power can be seen in recent presidential elections dating back to 1968. In that election, we now know that Richard Nixon sabotaged peace talks to end the war in Vietnam, fearing that an end to the war would help his Democratic opponent Hubert Humphrey. Add to that the coded racist language that Nixon used to win over white voters, known as the "Southern Strategy" and other dirty tricks his campaign pulled, and you can see that winning power meant more to him than anything, even when it meant prolonging a war.
Skipping over the presidency of Gerald Ford (who was, of course, appointed not elected) and we get to the 1980 campaign of Ronald Reagan. Although Reagan's 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter was seen as a landslide, it had been quite close until negations to bring back the American hostages in Iran fell through, making Carter look weak. Recently, Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, came forward to admit that he and other Republicans went on a trip to the Middle East before the election with one purpose: to make sure that the hostages didn't come home before the election by visiting Middle Eastern cities and telling regional leaders that Iran would get a better deal with Reagan. While this may not have been as despicable as Nixon's extending the Vietnam war, it still was unconscionable, as it essentially kept the hostages in prolonged bondage to win the election for Reagan. Add to that Reagan's continued use of Nixon's Southern Strategy (he announced his candidacy in the state of Mississippi, voicing his support of "state's rights", not far from where some civil rights workers were killed in the 60's while trying to register black voters), and we see another power hungry Republican President open to try anything to win the White House.
Eight years later, George Bush's won without sinking as low as the Nixon and Reagan campaigns did. But he still resorted to an openly racist ad campaign by linking the furlough of felon Willie Horton with his opponent Micheal Dukakis, turning around the early polls that showed him trailing Dukakis.
2000, of course, brought the whole fiasco in Florida. One of the uglier parts of that state's highly contested vote count was the reports that hundreds, perhaps even thousands of African American voters were turned away at the polls, told that their names were not on the voting lists. We know now that they were victims of a voter purge done by the state to remove ineligible felons from the voting lists that also removed eligible voters. The level of corruption in this election was such that George W Bush's brother, Jeb, was governor of Florida when all the madness occurred, and that the Supreme Court, which had members appointed by Bush's father, openly interfered in the election by stepping in and ending all the recounts to hand the election to Bush.
And then there was the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump. We now know that, even if the Trump campaign did not criminally collaborate with Russia during the election, that country definitely did interfere in ways both big (releasing thousands of hacked Democratic emails) and small (false Facebook accounts posting made up stories) to tip the election in Trump's favor. On top of that, we also know that the story of an alleged affair that Trump had with porn star Stormy Daniels in 2006 was killed before the election with a payoff made to Daniels by Trump's then personal lawyer, Micheal Cohen, who went to jail because of that payoff. (Whether Trump will also be charged with a crime over it remains to be seen).
There you have it, a brief history of conservative presidents using underhanded and sometimes criminal means to bring themselves to power. And I haven't even talked about the means used by them and other conservative politicians to maintain that power, from passing laws specifically designed to keep black voters from voting, to gerrymandering voting districts, to opposing any limits on campaign financing, the modern Republican party has found a way to win elections even without getting a majority of voters. Which means that, looking back at this history, I don't think I can see a future that will get any better, not when the next generation of conservatives will continue to assume that power is their birthright.
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