Congress fought Obama over race. His policies were pretty standard, middle of the road politics not that different from most other Democrats. Not even Bernie, a self-proclaimed Socialist, way to the left of Obama and Clinton was treated as shabbily by the Right as Obama was.

A Republican Congress felt they could mobilize sufficient public support to oppose a popular President with impunity using methods that would have been rejected against a white guy. Birtherism, calling him a liar at the State of the Union, refusing to even consider his nominee for SCOTUS and other agencies, and stonewalling his policies(many of which were actually voted into law) even when many were essentially recycled Republican proposals.

They weren't out to stop his ideas, they were out to stop HIM, because they could get away with it, even if it meant throwing the country into chaos, bankrupting the government, destroying the nation's credit, even shutting down the day-to-day operations of government. And why did they think they could get away with it? Because he was black. The idea was to make his Presidency a failure, no matter WHAT he did. No, maybe not all Conservatives are racists, but there were enough of them that this policy of obstruction and sabotage had a chance to work against a black guy where it would not have against a white one.

And you know I'm not making this up. McConnel said so in plain English, publicly, proudly: "We intend to make sure he is a one term President." Several times, GOP officials boasted publicly how their voter suppression policies guaranteed black people's votes would not be available to swing tight races.

The Right was desperate. The last Republican President had wrecked the economy and gotten us tangled up hopelessly in Iraq, they could not afford for Bush to go into history as the new Hoover and Obama to be seen as the new Roosevelt. They had to stop him, and they used his race as a weapon. I doubt if the GOP leadership was actually racist as individuals, these guys aren't dumb rednecks, they are ruthless corporate lawyers. But they knew perfectly well the backwater toothless bumpkins they relied on were going to jump when, and how high, they wanted.

As for our "positions being legitimately challenged for once"--give me a break, Rob. Don't paint yourselves as the victims here.
You people have been illegitimately challenging our policies for the last 8 years.

But we're not opposing Trump because he's white. We're not even opposing him because he's conservative. We are opposing him because he's a cynical opportunist, a boor and a thug and demagogue who has mobilized racist sentiment in order to promote self-serving policies designed to remove all constraints from a rapacious private sector and all social services from the poor. Even your own party thought as much and said so when they were opposing him for the nomination. But now they have all undergone a miraculous spine removal and are falling into place obediently, with the exception of McCane, Graham, and a handful of other brave ones.

Trump is an dangerous ass, but he's not an ass BECAUSE he's a Conservative. Hell, I think he could just as easily run as a Democrat if he had calculated he could get the votes that way instead. But the Republican Party has sacrificed their principles and fallen into line behind him because his policies will keep taxes, regulation, employment and salaries low, and health care expensive. In those conditions, corporate profits will remain over the top, which is really all they care about. These people will sell their mothers for a tax cut, I'm not too surprised they'll sell their country out as well.