If you've missed it, Republicans in the House and Senate have been outraged by President Trump's lack of racism denouncing. Their interest in distancing themselves from leaders of racist groups is nothing new. David Duke, former head of the KKK, has been disavowed by various Republican candidates over the years. Conventional wisdom says that you can't get general support if you're supported by hate groups.
The Republican establishment certainly believes this. After the defeat in 2012, they had an analysis of the election performed. The lesson learned was that they should seek the votes of minorities because the white majority was dwindling and the party could not continue to expect to win if it maintained its thorough reliance on white men. This, of course, comes after the highly racial backlash against Obama's victory in 2008. The backlash saw racist dog whistle remarks from many of the leaders in Congress as well as blatant racist remarks from the citizens attending rallies against Obama. There was a strong push to delegitimize Obama's win by suggesting he wasn't a US born citizen... one that Trump would join and come to the forefront of in the years after 2008.
2016 rolled along and the Republicans actually managed to run some candidates for President that were not white men... There were quite a few candidates (17), but among the top 10 were 1 white woman, 1 black man, 1 indian-american man, and 1 man of Cuban descent. That's right, almost 1/4 of the Republican Presidential ticket were non-white-men. That's impressive given the breakdown in Congress which shows that while Democrats having a little over 80% as many seats in the two chambers of the Federal legislative branch, they have 3 times the number of women (78:26) and nearly 6 times the number of minorities (94:16). In fact, the Democrats have just about the same ratio of minorities to whites in office at the Federal level as the country has in its population. That indicates that the Republicans have a long way to go to bring their office-holders looking like the citizens they are there to represent.
So, the Republicans ran 13 angry white men, 1 angry white woman, and 3 angry minority men in 2016. That's a lot of anger in one room... too much, in fact, so they had debates of <= 10 candidates instead. As you might expect, the woman in the group was the first to be taken down by the candidate that would, throughout the campaign, disparage and demean women. Good news for Trump: white nationalists tend to also be misogamists, so the base of his support is well in hand. Trump continued to name-call and demean his opponents and serving up red meat for his fearful followers in the form of suggesting that land-based immigration from Mexico, Chinese trade, NAFTA, Obama-care, and Islamic Extremist terrorism were the biggest threats to the US and only he knew how to resolve them. Care to count the racist elements of that train of dangers? Go on, take a moment to do the math and find the percentage of issues that are race-based. Trump was calling things as he saw them, or at least how people thought he saw them, and that was a strong selling point. Based on responses at rallies, being openly racist, misogamistic, self-aggrandizing, and anti-media were the biggest winners for Trump.
Supporters ate it all up. Finally, a candidate willing to be openly part of that group that the popular culture has been so opposed to. Popular culture, for decades, has been anti-racism and anti-misogamy. Trump's supporters loved the concept that political correctness was why their leaders tempered their words and used dog whistles instead of being, what popular culture would consider, openly racist and sexist. It's stifling our discussions, they would say, to not be able to talk in terms popularly considered to be racist and sexist without being called racists and sexists. After all, how can you have an honest discussion about Mexicans being rapists, Muslims being terrorists, women being emotional wrecks, and Blacks being lost sheep, duped into voting for a party that doesn't represent them, all these topics, while being labeled as someone who believes negative things about particular races and women? How can you possibly stand up for racist beliefs when you'll be called a racist? It's hard, I'm sure.
Anyway, the point being that for decades, the Republican party leaders had welcomed the quiet racism and almost-under-the-radar sexism, using dog whistles, code words that many of us understood the true meaning of but could be denied. Now, Trump was openly saying the racist and sexist things the dog whistles had indicated in a seemingly-defensible way. Much in the same way that the anti-government undercurrent that has supported the Tea Party was fostered by the Republican establishment and right wing news and talk shows, the undercurrent of racism and sexism, while based in a culture from the past, has been nurtured and given aid and comfort by the same parties. The Tea Party has become a problem for the Republican establishment because of a lack of interest in negotiating or doing anything that could be identified as promoting government... an issue that the Republicans trying to accomplish anything in Congress, even with control of both chambers, are running into now and undoubtedly questioning their push to get to this point. Likewise, Republican leaders are looking at the support being given to the racists now and railing against it. They were the ones that helped get us here though. It's hard to take Fox News saying that the President is not treating the situation appropriately when they've been pushing us in this direction for quite some time.
So, here's the question I have: Are the Republican leaders in Congress right to think that they can't be openly supportive of white supremacists? And are labels so damaging and so upsetting to people that they would prefer to empower the worst of the racists than to recognize that maybe, just maybe, they are indeed a bit racist and maybe, just maybe, they should accept being labeled as such when they say racist things.
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