ELI5 How did all these MAGA people get voted into congress? What did they promise they would do? and have they done it?

In some cases, they ran in districts that were already heavily Republican, often due to gerrymandering. They won because any Republican would have won.
If other Republicans ran in the primaries, they won the primary by exciting the primary voting base. Far fewer people vote in primaries, and they tend to be engaged in hype, and MAGA is all hype based propaganda based on fear and anger. That excites Republican primary voters.
The few that defeated incumbent Republicans did so through the hate and fear angle, because it works. It is a successful fascist playbook, as shown throughout history.
So basically they mostly won for the same reason Trump won in 2016, fascist propaganda stoking fear. They promised to solve all the problems they made up about the groups they blamed.
The whole Ohio immigrants eating pets is just the same thing, dialed up to 11.
- This is also why you vote in the primary of the party with the candidates you like least.
  If you view any candidate in party A as better than every candidate in party B, you need to vote in party B's primary so the best candidate for you will make it to the general election. Then even if party A loses the general election you still get the candidate you like most from party B.
  This was a key strategy for black people in the south to get the least racist Democrats into office. It's basically ad hoc ranked choice voting and it reduces the power of extremists.
  
  Depending on the state, one may not have that option.
  
  This is literally how Trump and many other fascist politicians have won. Don't support fascists, how can that not be obvious?
  Nvm I misread your comment at first

Much of USA treats their leaders team with the same reverence and loyalty they treat sports teams even if they are consistently ~~shitty~~ poopy.
- I live in Cleveland. I know all about cheering for shitty teams. Republicans are more like a cult.
  See, I refuse to cheer for the browns until 2027. I refuse to cheer for a rapist. I treat empathy of humans over who got the points by throwing a ball.
  With these people cruelty is the point. If I see a stray 99mph pitch hit another opposing player in the head, my immediate thought is "OH MY GOD!!! IS HE OK???"
  Whereas, the way republicans treat politics, the message is clear. "Oh my god, I hope they die!"
  Which is what helps explain a lot of their policy. They want to ban abortion, because they hope women die. They don't want gun reform laws, because they hope people die. They don't want medical care for anyone but them, because they hope others die.
  Sports is supposed to be the thing I watch to distract myself from all this bullshit. Sooooo.....GO GUARDS!!! BEAT THE YANKEES!!! (in a game of baseball. Not with violence.)
  
  Republicans are more like a cult.
  Republicans are ~~more like~~ a cult.
  FTFY
  And agreed on all fronts.
  
  I refuse to cheer for the browns
  Racist 😡
- It's okay, you can say “shitty” on Lemmy.

The root cause is economic. Wealth is being transferred to the billionaires at a growing rate. This causes difficulty for most people. If we were smart we would unify and tax obscene wealth, and everybody would be happy. But instead, those billionaires spend hundreds of millions of dollars stoking the flames of a culture war. They amplify every emotional issue to motivate emotional (outrage/anger/fear) voting. Now instead of liberals pushing progressive tax policy, they just vote for moderate democrats because the only other choice is a fascist. And if it wasn’t that, they’d stoke liberals into a Green Party socialism craziness and vilify it, so that again the sensible choice is moderates.
The real question you should ask is why are most representatives on both sides millionaires? There’s really only a handful of congress members who don’t already have millions in assets. I’ll answer it for you - it’s almost impossible to get elected without a major campaign donation. Rich people fear poor people rising up, so they throw money at measly millionaires to do their bidding and keep their power.
In summary: the rich control 90% of who gets elected on both sides. The rich get whatever they want, because everybody else thinks they need to vote based on a couple issues they saw on TV. The actual candidate doesn’t matter. They’re all billionare’s puppets, who vote on party lines in order to get re-elected. Stir the pot and lose your position.
- The actual candidate doesn’t matter. They’re all billionare’s puppets, who vote on party lines in order to get re-elected. Stir the pot and lose your position.
  This why I refer to them as "regime whores" really captures their role in the system
- A dumb shit bag occupying a senate seat is good for the rich, regardless of their affiliation, because it denies that seat to any potential proactive, organized, effective, popular, charismatic and progressive senator that might speak for the poor people.
  Red and blue both like MTG because all she does is camp a seat that might otherwise be a threat to them, and spout obnoxious retarded drivel that doesn't harm the rich controllers. She's just a noisy paperweight.

This is the best explanation of MAGA I've ever seen, still true after 8-years. Read it. It's important.
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
- The sad thing about that article though is that the spiked bat they picked out of desperation cares much less about them than the very people they aim their hated at. It's one of the biggest reasons that people like me that think trump is the lowest of the low, truly a garbage human being, detest the entire GOP and every person that supports them - they continue to enable their actual destructive behavior.
  It angers me to even see an article try to minimize the negative impact that is being imparted on our current and future generations. I understand that true elites are bad but you can't both sides this shit. One side is trying to make lives better and one side revels in destroying our civil liberties that our founders and troops bled for, ignoring the fact that their guy who is Jesus 2.0 leads us back towards a monarchy/dictatorship.
  Fuck that.
  The electoral college needs to go and our FPTP voting system needs to go if we ever truly want to make change as a nation. Otherwise we will continue to be stuck in a pissing match with no victor, while the elites get fatter. The GOP needs to die, they have no platform and don't stand for their ideals anymore - they're not the same party that existed back in the 2000s
- Articles like these place a lot of emphasis on the poor, rural members of MAGA, but there's not as much focus on the middle and upper class suburban contingents. People with pristine oversized pickups that have never left a paved road or hauled anything besides a new TV. That coalition as a whole needs to be understood to explain the rise of MAGA.
  Also, I don't know anyone who talks about poor, rural folks like that article supposes, and I've spent my entire life in blue urban areas. That guy needs some new friends if his do. In my experience, they speak about poor rural and poor urban people the same way: either equally empathetically or equally condescendingly.
  
  the middle and upper class suburban contingents
  We can't call these people out as it would alienated the suburban trash vote both parties need. Dunking on poors in politics is an American sport. Both sides do it because who cares... Losers lose!
- Thanks for sharing!
- That was really a great read thanks for sharing that!
  It was absolutely hilarious to get to the end not entirely realizing it and reading "You can pre-order Jason "David Wong" Pargin's book Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick ..." Lol
  The future definitely deserves to be punched in the dick though.

Systematic capture. They planned it.
- It saddens me to know that 68% of my country are a bunch of racists.
  
  I'm assuming you're from the US?
  Due to gerrymandering, even if republicans receive 68% of the seats, it doesn't mean 68% of the votes went to them. They might very well be able to take 68% of the seats with under 40% of the votes.
  
  68%? Where is that coming from ?

They believe they are living in a godless country. Liberals are out to destroy America with their evil atheist ways. They believe liberals are destroying traditional family values. They believe liberals want open borders so all the immigrants will vote for them. They believe those immigrants are all gang members just waiting to kill God fearing Christians. They believe this is a Christian country. They believe abortion is murder. Finally, they believe Trump is the only one who can save the country.
- Something like 63% of the US population identifies as Christian. That number is over 75% in Latin America.
  If they really wanted more Christians, they'd welcome the immigrants. But that's just an excuse to cover for the racism.
  
  No, because brown Hispanics tend to be catholic. That's the wrong Christian to a lot of the Bible belt

Some ran unopposed.
- And some that ran unopposed weren't unopposed until they harassed and threatened their opposition into dropping out of the race.
  
  Do you have any information references or links about that?

The MAGA movement of 2016 billed itself as an anti establishment movement. Contrasting itself from traditional Republicans and the Democratic party. It promised to "Drain the Swamp".
Their success is indictive of a discontent with the state of the government at the time. They targeted the blue collar demographic promising stances on issues that'd help them.
Here's a video on a county that voted Democrat from 1869-2016: https://youtu.be/yfxvHqTCy2w
Keep in mind you came to a left leaning platform with essentially no Trump supporters and asked why do people like Trump. Listen to what they cite not just us.
- People really forget/undersell that this was the original groundswell of support for Trump - particularly running against the Nth generation political hack that was Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general, and the Nth generation political hack that was John Ellis ‘Jeb’ Bush in the primary.
  Trump also touched the racism/xenophobia lightning rod in ways no mainstream Republican had since the civil right era, either with dog whistles, or c/overt wink-and-nod about “those people”.
  
  Trump also touched the racism/xenophobia lightning rod in ways no mainstream Republican had since the civil right era, either with dog whistles, or c/overt wink-and-nod about “those peoply
  Keep in mind he built a solid base by posting tons of anti-Obama and pushing the birther stuff long after it'd already been disproven. This resonated hard with with deep seated racism in this country and spread way too fast.

The way politics works now is that MAGA tries to reenact the Handmaid's Tale and/or sell the world to disaster capitalists while doing nothing to actually govern, Democrats try to play it cool and actually govern sometimes, and dark money gets poured into elections to make everything even murkier.

Citizens United. In 2001, corporations were suddenly allowed to donate an unlimited amount of money to political campaigns. Campaign donations were deemed a form of expression protected by the first ammendment. The entrenched far-right republicans were suddenly being outspent by even further right people from out of nowhere, unseating many of them. The game for both parties then became how much corporate donation can you attract, and for Republicans, they found the further right you go the more votes you get. So republican nominees could have standards or keep their job, not both. The ones that were the far-right were still professional legislators, genuinely believing conservativism is in society's best interest, and many of them tried to resist, like McCain and Romney. The new far-right ones are professional shills in it for personal gain. The old ones who stuck around are greedy cowards who know better. The Republicans have slid right at lightspeed ever since Citizens United.

Republicans got in bed with the Tea Party, pretended their opinions were legitimate, then found themselves being successfully primaried by the monster they legitimized.

Conservatives typically win by promising what they will not do vs. what they will do. (At least the true conservatives do. Not all Republicans are conservative though)

"Hey so did you actually meet my demands as a constituent?"
"Lol no"
Doesn't vote Democrat next election
Cleetus: "Finally the racist shitbag I've been voting every cycle for has been elected"
"This is all your fault as a voter that you didn't blindly vote for us after we refused to meet your demands. Now enjoy 2-4 years of racist shitbag so that you'll be guilted into voting for us again next cycle and instead of meeting your original demands, we'll just spend our time partially undoing all the stuff racist shitbag has implemented"
Repeat x99999999999

They promised to hurt the right people. The kind of people who will vote for them don't follow up on voting records, they just watch pundits or read web news that reaffirms their point of view and feelings.
The reality is a small percent of the voting public actually vote in primaries and those who do, on the right especially, tend to be the most extreme variety.
- I may be the only one but kind of makes me sad for people like that.

Hurt people. And yeah a lot of

They promise to punish the people republican voters don't like (poor people, minorities, and "elites"). And then they fulfill the first two.

Populism is fairly simple, you just parrot the following talking points:
The system isn’t working. I am fighting the system. Elect me and I’ll take the fight to them.
What isn’t working should be as vague as possible, so the voter believes it is the thing they’re angry about. When elected, the candidate should continue to complain about the system and crow about how hard they’re fighting for you, so you keep voting for them.
Unfortunately, this eventually leads to you actually passing legislation that makes everything much, much worse than it was. You can keep blaming the other side, but eventually, the jig is up.

They promised to be "not biden", and lemmings ate the fish like dynamite.
See, that phrase didn't make sense, but it doesn't need to. Politics for these people isn't about policy, or logic, or even country. It's about "if I win, you lose, so fuck you!".
And that's how we got here.

The same way all regime whores get into the office... Donor money and captured political process.
While plebs fighting culture wars, the parasite class is executing a class war!

Right: Things are shit because of the people who are already marginalized (letting us take advantage of pre-existing prejudice and targeting the people with the smallest platforms to push back against our narratives)
Left: Things are shit because the people at the top are fucking over all of us together
Center: Things aren't shit
In the absence of a leftist narrative, the most fundamental Center vs Right disagreement is just whether or not things are shit. As things get shittier and shittier, the Center will keep losing strength to the Right.
- Probably a dumb question but if I ran as a hateful republican and won a seat do you think after my first term is up I could retire a millionairre?

That type of candidate my or may not have any coherent platform. Even more than for a normal politician, it's about pandering to people's identity. They also have the advantage that they can lie about what they've done, and then just cover those lies with more lies and misdirections if called out.
In normal times people aren't totally fooled by that, but it has been working very well in the US (and to a degree Canada), lately.