And it turns out in fact that basically nobody *other* than a handful of people in political leadership positions actually thought "socially moderate, economically conservative" was a good idea.
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In both the UK and the US, as soon as someone actually offered utterly fucking deranged frothing hatred as an offer on a ballot paper, presented on an equal footing with sensible options, it became clear that the majority of the conservative voter base had wanted that all along.
So the patrician element of both the Conservative and Republican parties basically had a meltdown and either surrendered and joined the fascists or quit their parties for political irrelevance.
Sadly, this happened at pretty much the same time that the major centre-*left* parties in both countries decided "wait a minute! This means that all those patrician, sneering, socially-moderate-fiscally-far-right voters who voted for the Tories/Republicans for decades are now up for grabs!"
Making the same mistake that the Tory and Republican leaderships had made previously of thinking that the ideas of people like Anna Soubry in the UK or Liz Cheney in the US were in any way popular.
I think this is a very good assessment. The one twist I’d add has to do with California - the biggest state in the US (39m residents). For decades, despite its rep as liberal, anything-goes land, it was actually something of a Republican stronghold - both Reagan and Nixon were Californians…
The CA GOP did elect a lot of right-wing loons, but also elected the more reality-bases types you describe. But during the 1990s the far right took over the CA GOP and made anti-immigrant and anti-affirmative action politics their big causes. Though they won those fights in the short term…
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With an overly self-congratulatory culture
“Checks and balances”
A penchant for pointing at other countries and saying “look how worse”