TL;DR I maintain that it was not just a very unfortunate turn of events that allowed the MAGA mentality to completely take over the Republican party, and that it is not so hard to imagine different circumstances leading to a left-wing version of it.
In a "Beg to Differ" podcast episode (43:13) a few months ago, Mona Charen took a run at a form of half-hearted apologism for the conservative movement, by trying to make the case that the contemporary descent into MAGA madness was circumstantial, and one could imagine something comparable happening in the democratic party:
I do think that it’s too easy to say it had to happen this way because I don’t think it did. I think the party had many more it was mostly full of normies. And then Trump came along, and he kind of stripped away the barriers, and the normal inhibitions that most people have, and suddenly people fell in line.
The "mostly full of normies" part is where I differ. Circa 1980, that was a fair statement. Where the seeds of madness were sown, in my view, is when the mainstream/secular right made an unholy strategic alliance with the emerging religious and populist right. In my view, the two camps didn't have that much in common, beyond sharing a common opponent, "big government".
In particular, these groups were devoted to particular issues/beliefs are so utterly contrary to facts, that they can only be maintained through denial of facts. At the top of the list: Creationism, Guns Are a Positive Good run-rights maximalism. And the "no compromising" rhetoric that is the antithesis of democratic politics, but inherent to dogmatically-held beliefs. These issues were the gateway drug for Denialism, which spread and became both a habit of existing Republicans, and a draw for new ones. It was less than a generation ago, for instance, that anti-vaxism was associated with the far left, but now the right is the home of the anti-vax crowd.
(For the record, I appreciate and support both the podcast, and Mona Charen. It's just that I have to "beg to differ" on this one.)
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