The late Republican Senator Lowell Weicker, Jr. would never recognize today’s Republican Party. Weicker, who died in 2023, did live to see some radical changes – enough so that he pulled out of the party and was elected governor of Connecticut as a third-party candidate.
Before that, he served two terms in the U.S. Senate and sat on the historic Senate Watergate Committee chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin, Jr. of North Carolina.
Attempts by social conservatives to advance their agenda — whether through enacting legislation regarding prayer in public schools or restrictions on abortion rights — drew Weicker’s particular ire, who saw the increasing power of the Christian right in his party as a grave threat to its future.
“No greater mischief can be created than to combine the power of religion with the power of government. History has shown us that time and time again.”
Sen. Lowell Weicker
It was during testimony by White House counsel John Dean that the nation first learned that Republican President Richard Nixon kept an “enemies list.” Following is Weicker’s response to that revelation:
“I say before you and before the American people that I’m here as a Republican and I think I express the feelings of the 42 other Republican senators and the Republicans of Connecticut and the feelings of the Republican party far better than those who committed illegal, unconstitutional and gross acts.
“Let me make it clear, because I have got to have my partisan moment: Republicans do not cover up; Republicans do not go ahead and threaten; Republicans do not go ahead and commit illegal acts; and, God knows, Republicans don’t view their fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed.’’
All of which seems to beg the question: what the hell happened to the Republican Party?
Louisiana Voice 
A huge majority of “Republican” voters – numbed by years of consuming propaganda media – sold out their morals, their ethics, their faith, their ideology, and their intellectual honesty to an irredeemably corrupt liar for the ecstasy of wallowing in their prejudices with him. Most elected “Republicans,” their donors, and party apparatchiks went along for the ride. That’s what happened to the former Republican party.