I'm one of those 'liberals', who's been watching the Republican party descend from being the party of conservative ideals (e.g. small government, family values - as they see them) to one of bitterness and paranoia.

They can see that they've lost control of the culture - and they're in process of losing their highest-caste position. And economic security for anyone without a college degree is gone - it's been clear since the mid 80s that we've been abandoning these folks to their economic depression.

Starting with Gingrich and the Tea Party the Republican party has become the party of hate and resentment. pushed by right-wing media - most notably Fox, but now there are others.

They've given up any hope of winning the cultural argument, and, instead are focusing on bad-faith claims, conspiracy theories, and manufactured culture war hysterics (e.g. abortion, gay marriage, trans rights).

I think they've decided that authoritarianism is the only way to win this 'culture war' - and that 'war' is now more important to them than our democracy.

So, economic insecurity, cultural insecurity, caste insecurity - of *course* right-wing media found a ready audience.

My own take was that the R party was actual conservatives running a kind of a scam to get these people to vote against their own interests - but now it looks as though the scam-ees have taken over, leaving the conservatives with the choice to either bow down or leave.

Yes, Trump is taking advantage of this, feeding bad faith claims, lies, and conspiracy theories into the right-wing echo chamber - and taking the echoes as reality. Listen to that phone call; he seems to believe he had a huge win in Georgia.

Trump being out of power - or in state prison (which I find preferable) won't change the situation that's been created by Gingrich and Fox.

With 70+ million people who've bought into this, I'm not particularly sanguine about the next decade.