That has been the goal all along, find and exploit the weaknesses in a Democratic Republic. Well done GOP, this is what they have been working on since the late 1960s.
What the people who founded this nation feared were 2 things; government control/armies and white men lossing their control.
That the society evolved was not really taken into account but it did evolve and people became more educated, people began to think - it was the Civil War years in the 1860s the fight to end slavery. Early 1900s women finally get to vote. 1935, secretary of labor Frances Perkins gets FDR to sign into law the labor rights, child protection, work hours, Social Security, etc. Finally in the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights. White men and then white women fought every damn one of those societal advances.
White men with scads of money backed them. Everyone KNEW the money in politics and then religion were problems and no one stopped it.