Observations on today's GOP

When Ned were a lad, the GOP was a respectable organization. Strong in the Midwest, the Far West, parts of New England, etc--only unrepresented in the most benighted regions of this country--the former Confederacy. Contrary to Conventional Wisdom, it wasn't Nixon, with his Southern Strategy, that begin the transformation of the GOP into Infamy and Disgrace--it was FDR and Harry Truman. The plutocrats feared, hated and despised FDR, whom they viewed as a Traitor to His Class. In their view, the riff raff could be taken care of by going to the back door of a church or mansion of a Sneering Plutocrat and beg for the scraps that the cat wouldn't eat, remembering to doff their caps and look at their feet all the while. To FDR, all Americans deserved the dignity of a roof over their heads, food on their table, decent medical care and an education. Social Security was the result. Truman added a desegregated military, the GI BIll, and Humphrey-Hawkins, a bill that set as a goal of the federal government a job for everyone. And who, having survived the Great Depression, would settle for less?
In 1948, Strom Thurmond broke away from the Democrats because of Truman and ran as a "Dixiecrat" and carried several states. That set the demise of the Democratic Party in the South: LBJ only finished the job. The GOP, to its eternal shame, then came up with its "Southern Strategy," and sold its soul for a few pieces of silver, riding the back of the tiger of racial hatred and ignorance.
"Fast-forward" to today and we have the spectacle of a Rump GOP, beholden to the Ignorant, The Sneering Plutocracy, the Gun Nuts, the Anti-Science Crowd, and sundry other creatures with a mindset, if one can call it that, of creatures who live under rocks and have no love of day.
They have become, in Tolkien's word, orcs.