@tzimmer_history@mastodon.social What happened -- and Buckley and Goldwater were both a part of this -- was that the post-FDR Right got desperate, and wooed extremists to their cause, to tap that deep well of emotional vigour. And it worked in the short term. But it also had predictable longer-term costs. (And Goldwater DID predict them, and warn against this.) If you hand your weapon to an extremist, you risk becoming their prisoner. And that's what's happened to the GOP. Today's GOP is run by those nuts.