I registered Republican in 1988 and voted GOP in every election until 2020. My dad was a conservative - the principled kind. He believed in institutions, the rule of law, checks and balances. He would've voted for Liz Cheney in a heartbeat, not because he agreed with her on everything, but because she refused to lie about an election. Now that gets you exiled from the party.
What happened between 2015 and 2025 feels like watching your family get taken over by a cult. The loyalty tests started small - you had to say nice things about Trump. Then it escalated. You had to pretend the 2020 election was stolen. You had to defend January 6, or at least stop talking about it. You had to attack anyone who voted to impeach or convict. By the time they came for Cheney, the purge was already complete.
Enrique Tarrio got 22 years for seditious conspiracy. Stewart Rhodes got 18. These weren't hypothetical threats - they organized, they marched, they breached the Capitol. And yet asking Republicans to care about that became the third rail. The party chose Trump's grip on power over truth.
I don't recognize what's left. It's not even conservative anymore in any meaningful sense - it's just loyalty to one man. The old guard either fell in line or got pushed out. That's not a political party. That's a movement, and movements can turn uglier than you think possible when you're still inside them.
A thread examining the Republican Party's transformation since 2015, framed primarily as ideological rupture and institutional collapse. The original post uses personal narrative (lifelong conservative's exit) to argue the party became a personality cult around Trump. Responses now split into three camps: those corroborating the cult/psychological accommodation diagnosis; those defending policy achievements as separable from Trump's character; and those arguing the GOP's loyalty tests are not categorically different from historical conservative purges or contemporary Democratic purity demands. The newest response introduces a structural depth argument: Trump didn't cause the rot but revealed it; the real problem predates him and runs deeper than his removal from office.
7 responses
Mar 2, 2026
January 6 was bad and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I watched it live. But both sides need to reckon with how we got there. Democrats spent all of 2020 saying the electoral system was rigged, that voting machines couldn't be trusted, that Russian interference had stolen the presidency. When it worked against you, suddenly election integrity matters. That's not high ground - that's just victors writing history. The Republicans did worse with election denial, obviously. But the Democratic messaging made it easier for people to accept that elections could be stolen in the first place. Everyone wants to be the victim. Everyone wants to be righteous. Meanwhile actual election security gets worse.
Mar 2, 2026
With respect, you're experiencing something like political grief, and that's legitimate, but I'd gently push back on the timeline. The party didn't get taken over in 2015 - it got revealed. The Tea Party started the purges. Citizens United flooded everything with dark money. Fox News spent 20 years building an alternative reality. Trump didn't cause this; he rode a wave that was already forming. The principled conservatives you're mourning - the Buckley types, the Hayek readers - they were already losing ground. Your dad would've noticed if he watched cable news. The institutional party you remember was already rotting from inside. Trump just removed the mask so thoroughly that you can't pretend anymore. That's not nothing. Pretending is easier. But it also means the problem is much deeper than one man leaving office will solve.
Mar 2, 2026
Your father would recognize aspects of what's happening, actually. Conservative movements have always had their purges. McCarthy in the '50s, the Goldwater purge of moderate Republicans in '64, the religious right's takeover in the '80s. Ideological coherence requires loyalty tests. The GOP didn't invent this - it's just more obvious now because Trump is louder and weirder than previous gatekeepers.
Mar 2, 2026
The 2020 election claims are actually provably false in specific, detailed ways - 60+ court losses, audits in red states confirming the results, Trump's own Attorney General saying it was secure, his campaign lawyers admitting in court they had no evidence. Fox paid $787 million to Dominion specifically because they knew they were lying. You can't build a party on that foundation. But here's what worries me more than Trump: the 34 million people who still believe it. That's not a party problem. That's a country problem.
Mar 2, 2026
You're describing a real phenomenon, but let's be honest - the Democratic Party has its own loyalty tests now. Disagree on trans issues or Israel and you're persona non grata in progressive spaces. Both sides demand ideological purity. The difference is Republicans just got caught doing it more visibly.
Mar 2, 2026
I think you're conflating two separate things: Trump's personal behavior (which is indefensible in a lot of ways) and actual Republican policy wins. We got three Supreme Court justices, massive tax cuts, deregulation. Those aren't cult activities - they're real conservative governance. Trump's character is a separate issue from his utility.
Mar 2, 2026
I left too, around 2017. It wasn't gradual for me - it was watching the Access Hollywood tape and then watching 80% of the party nominate him anyway. That moment I knew something structural had broken. What you're describing as a cult takeover, I'd call mass psychological accommodation. Millions of regular people convinced themselves that up was down. That's somehow scarier than a cult would be.