The first shattered guardrail described by David Frum in his Atlantic article was the shattering of expectations that politicians & those in high office will act with a certain level of decorum.
While Frum cites examples of politicians who embodied this quality - including Barack Obama - he goes silent on WHO brought us to the point where the former GOP presidential candidate describes their presumptive nominee as embodying “the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.”
What Frum doesn't mention is WHEN that lack of basic civility began to seriously unravel. My conservative friends point to how the Dems treated Bush 43, but the reality is that i don't recall progressives talking about hating W - which is not to say he wasn't spoken of with contempt & disbelief. It was an isolated few who called for his impeachment.
Civility went belly up on the night of Barack Obama's inauguration, when an inner circle of GOP elites gathered to proclaim their utter determination to block anything he sought to advance.
They upped the ante when, during the president's first State of the Union, Rep Joe Wilson shouted out, "You lie!"
And compounded when, during his 2010 State of the Union, the president took SCOTUS to task for its Citizen's United ruling, to which Justice Alito visible said, "Not true, not true." (Alas, the years have proven the prescience of the president's rebuke.)
It totally went out the window with conservative talk show hosts & Fox News pundits.
This first guardrail - maintaining a respectful level of decorum - was definitely snapped by the GOP, with just the slightest assist from the left.
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