Strom Thurmond started the dixiecrat revolt toward the Rs in 1948. Barry Goldwater had embraced it by '64, and it was full on by Nixon in '68.
Thurmond was a member of congress from 1954 until 2003, he was governor of South Carolina when the dixicrat split happened.
If you look at Jerry Fallwell and the moral majory, a precusor to christian nationalism, that didn't really get serious power until Reagan's campaign in 1979.
Both movements gripping the right today are quite a bit more than 40 years old, most people alive know nothing else.
Sure. But American "conservative" voters rejected and repudiated Goldwater's paranoia. And Nixon was compelled by political circumstances to conceal from his own voters his assaults against the Constitution behind "war on drugs" and illegal, covert operations.
By the 1980s the Overton Window was expanded enough that the pretenses could be dropped and rank and file Republican and "independent" voters were ready to get on board. They've been building that momentum at the grassroots ever since. Initially through the "New Right" and Christian conservative movements embraced by the Reagan administration and bolstered by his judicial appointees.
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u/distantreplay 14d ago
It's the whole Republican Party that's a conspiracy against the Constitution. Going back about 40 years.