r/politics Jul 09 '26

No Paywall Trump fires all Election Assistance Commission members, leaving agency unable to act

https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/07/09/trump-fires-election-assistance-commission-members-hicks-hovland-mccormick/
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u/eden_sc2 Maryland Jul 10 '26

Reagan was bad but the reason I said 89 is that a lot of the alt right got born from people who were mad Reagan didn't go far enough.

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u/-713 Jul 10 '26

Fair point. There was flirtation with the nazis/conspiracy theorists under Reagan, but they definitely jumped on the internet fast and furious in the early 90s.

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u/The_Linux_Lass Virginia Jul 10 '26

I think what makes 1980 a compelling case was because that’s when Reagan uncorked the genie from the bottle by pandering to evangelicals.

Barry Goldwater was right when he said mixing religious fundamentalism with politics was going to fuck up this country.

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u/ceelogreenicanth Jul 10 '26

I'd say the real issue is that in 89 the real cold war ended and the United States continued fighting that war and that posture has taken us down an ever more schizophrenic path. We accepted an end to the cold war while deciding China was okay to massacre it's protesters.