ARE REPUBLICANS RACISTS?

The Republican Party and the “conservative establishment” do not disagree with Trump’s racism, xenophobia, prejudice and bigotry toward Hispanic and Latino immigrants, non-whites, Muslims and women. They are just embarrassed and aghast that Donald Trump has dropped the mask of racist gentility and exposed the racist id of today’s Republican Party and movement conservatism for the world to see.

Republican Party elites are nervous about Donald Trump because he has taken their “polite” “dog whistle” racism and replaced it with a loud speaker.


Donald Trump

As the world looks on askance at the freakishness of the US presidential election, it is worth bearing in mind that a large number of Americans feel much the same sense of unease.

To outside eyes, the rise of Donald Trump especially looks like the ultimate “Only in America” story, but many of his compatriots wish it was a “Not in America” phenomenon.

For all the billionaire’s dominance in the Republican race, for all the free airtime lavished upon him by the media, polls repeatedly suggest that he is the most unpopular presidential candidate in modern history.

A recent survey conducted for the Washington Post and ABC News showed that 67% of voters have an unfavorable view of him.

What’s also striking about the polling data is that the more exposure the billionaire gets, the higher his negatives soar, whether it is women angered by his misogyny, Latinos upset by his racial demagoguery, African-Americans who don’t take kindly to being called “the blacks” or fellow Republicans who believe he will lead their party off a cliff.

Donald Trump is the preferred candidate of white supremacists. Online and in other spaces, they have anointed him their champion in the 2016 presidential race.

Trump & KKK (David Duke) Connection, that he knows nothing about…

LIAR LIAR – “Just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK?” Trump said. Trump was pressed three times on whether he’d distance himself from the Ku Klux Klan — but never mentioned the group in his answers.

“I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists,” he said. “So I don’t know. I don’t know — did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists…”

Despite what he said, Trump apparently did know Duke in 2000 — citing him, as well as Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani — in a statement that year explaining why he had decided to end his brief flirtation with a Reform Party presidential campaign.

“The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not the company I wish to keep,” Trump said in a statement reported then by The New York Times. …

Politics is not about people but about parties and their ideology; political parties are a type of “brand name” that voters associate with a specific set of policies, ideas, personalities and moral values. Consequently, the types of voters who are attracted to a given political party also tells us a great deal about how it is perceived by the public. And in a democracy, the relationship between voters, elected officials and a given political party should ideally be reflected by the types of policies the latter advances in order to both win and stay in power.

By these criteria, the post-civil rights era Republican Party is the United States’ largest white identity organization, one in which conservatism and racism are now one and the same thing.

In the 2012 election, 89 percent of Republican voters were white. While the Republican Party routinely anoints a professional “best black friend” (Herman Cain in 2012; Ben Carson in 2016; Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele in 2009) who serves in the role as human chaff to deflect charges of racism, non-whites are a minuscule part of the GOP’s electoral coalition and base. This is reflected by how Republican voters are much more likely to be racially resentful toward black Americans and also manifest what is known as “modern” or “symbolic racism.”

Even more troubling, research by Brown University political scientist Michael Tesler demonstrates that “old-fashioned racism” has actually increased among Republican voters since the election of Barack Obama.

New Tactics but same old agenda – Birth of The Southern Strategy

The Southern Strategy, with its mix of coded and overt anti-black and brown racism, is a script that is closely adhered to by the broader right-wing news entertainment propaganda machine.

The Southern Strategy was desperately deployed against the United States’ first black president, Barack Obama. From “birtherism” to claims that Obama is “traitor” who “hates Americans,” the rampant disrespect and obstructionism that Republicans have shown toward him, as well as the panoply of both overt and subtle racist attacks by conservatives against Obama’s person (and family) are all outgrowths of the Southern Strategy.

The Age of Obama also gave rise to the Tea Party movement. As an extreme wing within an already extremist and revanchist Republican Party, Tea Party members and their sympathizers were/are extremely hostile to Barack Obama and the symbolic power of a black man leading “their” White America. The Tea Party demand that “they want their country back” is both a direct claim of white privilege and constitutes a worldview where whiteness is taken to be synonymous with being a “real American.”

Not all Republicans are racists. But racists are more likely to be Republicans.

Donald Trump knows this to be true. He has built a political campaign around that fact.

Ultimately, Republican Party elites are nervous about Donald Trump because he has taken their “polite” “dog whistle” racism and replaced it with a loud speaker.

The Republican Party and the “conservative establishment” do not disagree with Trump’s racism, xenophobia, prejudice and bigotry toward Hispanic and Latino immigrants, non-whites, Muslims and women. They are just embarrassed and aghast that Donald Trump has dropped the mask of racist gentility and exposed the racist id of today’s Republican Party and movement conservatism for the world to see.

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