The tiki torch guys, well, they're the original far-right guys, and are still far right because they were already past the threshold since the beginning.
The tiki torch guys, well, they're the original far-right guys, and are still far right because they were already past the threshold since the beginning.
That’s not how that works in general any more than Hawaii getting hotter means Alaska gets colder, and it’s not an accurate description of what’s happened in the GOP ideological purges since the turn of the century. In the 90s, Republican leaders were vocally against torture, in favor of immigration, supportive of gun control, and when David Duke tried to run for Senate he was condemned and prominent Republicans steered votes to the Democratic candidate rather than risk a white supremacist getting elected. Those fringe right groups showed no signs of believing that the Republican establishment welcomed them, unlike now.
That’s not to say that there weren’t problems but after watching moderate, and especially small-d democratic, voices be purged from the party for being insufficiently right-wing it’s really hard to support the claim that the GOP hasn’t moved much further to the right.