The #1 job of American politicians is to keep their job. This takes precedence over serving the country, protecting their constituency, voting with their conscience, and being halfway decent human beings. It doesn’t matter if it’s Republican or Democrat or independent: keeping the job is everything. That means pandering to your constituents and making them hate and fear their opponents. That way, no matter how poor a job you do, they’ll keep you in office rather than gambling on the witch/Muslim/pot-smoking/probably adulterous person running against you.

While he did some good things, President GW Bush was a terrible president by many standards, primarily the ones the Republicans themselves are supposed to value. Under his presidency, the economy tanked, civil rights eroded, education massively suffered, and we got involved in two thoroughly pointless, unwinnable wars. America alienated allies both foreign and domestic. It was clear then-Senator Obama was going to win just because people were sick and tired of President Bush and anyone associated with him.

A good Democratic president is good for the country (as is a good Republican president), but it’s bad news if you’re a Republican trying to keep your job. The party’s strategy was instantly (and unashamedly) clear: make President Obama a villain. Appeal to people’s racism with that birth certificate nonsense, appeal to our fear of terrorists by implying (sometimes just saying outright) that he’s a Muslim, paint him as an elitist, blame him for everything, including things that happened before he took office and things that have nothing to do with the president (war on Christmas, anyone?) and do everything in the party’s power to see nothing gets done under his administration.

This Republican strategy has actively hurt the country. Health care, immigration reform, the economy, even just running the government have all been tools used by the GOP to make the president look bad. Why? So that next term people would hate Democrats and vote for Republicans and the people actually hurting the country would keep their jobs. It’s pretty much the Republicans message to American voters: let us keep our jobs or we’re going to do even worse things to you in future.

Of course, they didn’t see they were making a perfect storm for Trump (or some other charismatic “outsider” blowhard) to come in and snatch up the nomination by capitalizing on all that fear and racism and xenophobia while they offered up nothing better than Cruz and company. I’d laugh, but that furry glass of orange juice absolutely terrifies me.