Look at the issues the Republicans continue to hammer on and you’ll notice a pattern. I mention xenophobia and fear a lot. but you can broaden it out into a wider pattern. Make sure to tear down groups that are in the minority in order to create a sense of superiority in the people not affected. Give people an excuse, a reason to look down on others and judge them wanting. Judge them immoral, and give the people who aren’t affected someone to point at, and think, ‘thank goodness I’m not like that guy/gal’.

Meanwhile, continue to push the idea that everyone is successful if only they try hard enough, and that the ones who fail, who are out of work, it must be a moral failing that causes them to be idled. Since they’re moral failures, don’t help them, don’t let the government waste *your* morally worked for hard earned money to those lazy people.

Push the idea that pregnancy is a moral judgment because the woman had sex, never mind if she was 12 and forced by daddy, or 35 and raped by some guy at knife point. Never mind if the condom breaks, or the pill didn’t work. And what must have the woman done wrong if the child is developing without a brain?

You see the same pattern with illegal immigrants and minority religions. They’re not like us, they’re from another place, and they’re here to steal our jobs (and maybe our daughters too). Minority religions? well, they’re all going to Hell, but they may be terrorists or immoral godless heathens!

It’s an Us versus Them mentality, which strives to make sure the Them is either some small group that can be judged, or is some nebulous entity that is scary and out to destroy America.

It’s the same song and dance from the Republican party, and as the War for the Republican soul winds down and the new breed of conservatism grabs the bit, you can expect the stridency to increase, the rhetoric to be pushed further extremes, and the danger of a real rupture in America increase.