In order to answer the question, Are Republicans Thugs?, it'll take coming to grips with the fact that the Republican Party is not the same party one's grandparents voted for.

To grasp what has taken place, one must understand that from the late 1800s thru the mid-1900s, the Democratic Party was controlled by the unions in the United States. At that time, the US manufactured 90% of the goods Americans used and 30% of those used in other countries; the Democrats ruled through labor. Although there was enough lies and stealing going on to tilt Earth on its axis, the jobs and money stayed in the United States. That made for a very strong country and dollar.

Business owners who weren’t happy with just making a living, in many cases less net income than the union bosses, set out to fight political corruption with political corruption. They started heaping money and favors on Republican politicians who were, for the most part, considered political nerds by the Democrats. While these politicians were by no stretch of the imagination nerds, they were a minority. Gaining a little dignity and getting even was a far stronger pull than doing well for their country, especially since they had no real say in the status quo anyway. With the new money, these Republican voices began to be heard. They were being heard because these business owners did another very smart thing--they cut back or closed down the businesses that the unions were controlling and bought newspapers, radio stations and all other forms of the media and then set out to destroy their arch enemy, the unions. While the cigar-smoking, do-nothing Democrats were telling jokes about the nerds who had actually won a couple of unexpected seats in Congress, the American voters were not laughing; but the American business owners were starting to smirk.

The Republican Party's rise to power was nothing short of Cinderella or Robin Hood, at least for a brief moment. As the leaves fall in late autumn because of the lack of nutrients, so did the infrastructure and well-being of the United States. It is very easy to see how this corporate leadership has just about destroyed the greatest country in the history of the world in just a few short years. Whereas 90% of the revenues of corporate America stayed at home under union control, and was divided up reasonably equal by those doing the work, the new Republicans and their bosses divided the money using a ¼ split system. Top management took a ¼ from the top regardless of the outcome of their leadership, they sent a ¼ to their political puppets, another ¼ was sent out of the country for cheap labor, and they graciously allowed Americans to divvy up the rest however they saw fit. One might argue that this still left 3/4 of the money in the US, and that would be true. The problem is half of that money was split up between 300,000 instead of 300,000,000. Add to that the fact that a large percentage of this money went into tax free shelters that were then invested in the overseas companies that were getting the jobs once done by Americans, and it's a triple whammy. Being a Republican, I can't say for sure if we're thugs or not; but if we're not, we'll do until some thugs come along.