What would it look like if a Republican president took office and then immediately set about

replacing all the career officials with right-wing ideologues seeking to upend the way the federal

government works.

There's recently been a lot of speculation

about just that kind of scenario.

But we don't actually have to imagine,

because something like that has happened before in July of 1981.

Here's the headline.

Reagan reversing many US policies.

The New York Times reported the Reagan administration has quietly said about accomplishing a

sweeping reversal of policy and practice in the way the government deals with

business and individual citizens. In key cabinet and regulatory posts, the Reagan administration, the Reagan

transformation amounts to a revolution of attitude involving the appointment of

officials who in previous administrations might have been ruled out by concern over possible lack of qualifications

or conflict of interest or open hostility to the mission of the agencies they now lead.

Sounds familiar! President Reagan embarked on what you might

call the first modern purge of the administrative state, filling the

federal government with young conservative zealots who are looking to

carry out a radical new agenda and nowhere was that more evident than at the

Department of Justice. As Politico magazine reported in 2015, the DOJ was the nerve center of the Reagan

Revolution, the most intellectually vibrant and ideologically conservative agency of the

federal government. Among the battalion of conservatives of the

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