When looking back through history to figure out how we ended up in this hellscape that will inevitably be known as the "Trump era," pundits often look to predecessors like Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, Richard Nixon in the '70s or even Ronald Reagan in the '80s. The 1990s, however, are often overlooked, even though that's when Donald Trump's notoriety as a tabloid fixture really came into focus. That decade is often remembered fondly these days, as a time of relative innocence, a country preoccupied with how to figure out email and what to do about a president getting a blow job in the Oval Office.
In her new book "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s," historian Nicole Hemmer wants us to take another look at the '90s. It was, she writes, "actually an era of right wing radicalization." And not just on the fringes, as with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Led by figures like House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich and race-baiting gadfly Pat Buchanan, it was a time when the GOP stopped being merely a conservative party and forged its new path — a competitive race to the bottom in which the trophy goes to the most repulsive political troll. (Right now, it's Trump, but there are contenders, including Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis.) That was when the idea of winning elections in order to govern wound down for Republicans and was replaced with scorched-earth politics, in which destroying the opposition is all that matters.
