Republicans made a deal with the devil 60 years ago, and the devil has come to collect.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater turned the party of Lincoln into the party that opposed civil rights.

In 1968, Richard Nixon followed Strom Thurmond’s Southern Strategy to the White House.

In 1972, Nixon helped elect North Carolina’s Jesse Helms to the Senate, where he became the foremost opponent of civil rights and voting rights.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan said “I believe in states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush let Lee Atwater use the Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis.

In 2000, supporters of George W. Bush spread rumors that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate Black child.

Even McCain and Mitt Romney accepted the embrace of racists.

Then came Donald Trump, who unleashed the MAGA, Proud Boy, neo-Nazi, Confederate-flag-waving beast and loosed it on the Capitol, Congress and the Constitution.

At his Waco rally last weekend, Trump stood at attention, hand over heart, as a choir of January 6 prisoners performed and big screens showed footage from the insurrection.

Step by step, the beast demands more.

Republicans adopted the beast. Now they try to appease it.

They should heed Winston Churchill: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”