Trump showed the GOP they can be as racist as they want to be
They don’t care about no woke criticism. They’re just going for it:
Donald Trump is getting headlines for saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” But for months the GOP race for president has been shadowed by xenophobia, as some candidates or those backing them have embraced racist and white nationalist themes.
It’s partly a reflection of how Trump has moved Republican politics toward the harder-edged, “us vs. them” view that now dominates the GOP’s base and is reshaping its membership in Congress.
This is from Axios. It’s nice that they’ve noticed it’s not just Trump. It’s very important to report this because there may be a handful of people who have always voted Republican who are not exactly on board with the crudeness of this. (The dog whistles always provided deniability.)
Even as the GOP has recruited more minority prospects for public office — this year’s initial field for the presidential race was historically diverse — more Republicans are latching onto Trump’s racially divisive rhetoric.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, has won fans among white nationalists for promoting the “Great Replacement Theory,” a racist conspiracy theory that nonwhite people are being allowed into the U.S. and other Western countries to replace white voters. Ramaswamy, who among the GOP candidates has been particularly reluctant to criticize Trump, also has campaigned with former Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who has said that U.S. culture can’t be restored “with somebody else’s babies” and called for an America “so homogeneous that we look a lot the same.”
Last summer, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ team fired a speechwriter who created campaign material with neo-Nazi imagery, then shared it on a pro-DeSantis Twitter account.
More recently, some far-righters, conservative groups and others have begun calling former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley — whose parents were Indian immigrants — “Nimarata,” her first name, rather than Nikki, the middle name she has gone by for most of her life. The emphasis on Haley’s Indian heritage has escalated as she has risen in GOP polls and cast herself as a less chaotic, more sensitive conservative than Trump. Ramaswamy has called Haley “lying Nimarata Randhawa,” referencing her family name before marriage.
[…]
At the Turning Point’s convention last weekend, some attendees were asked to mark their preference for Trump’s vice presidential pick on a screen, on which Haley was identified as “Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley.” On the board, Haley’s face was scribbled over and someone had written “Boo!” next to it. Two others on the informal survey, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, were identified only by their first names.
The Turning Point scene was partly a reflection of attendees’ loyalty to Trump, but the emphasis on Haley’s nonwhite heritage was hard to miss. It echoed Trump’s frequent, derisive mentions of former President Barack Obama’s middle name — Hussein — even though Trump never ran against Obama. Critics have called Trump’s tactic a racist dog-whistle.
There’s no containing it now. As Axios reports, they had the chance after their 2012 “autopsy” report which made clear that their racism was hurting the party nationally and depriving it of a future They went with Trump instead. And here we are.
This is going to be very clarifying. You’ll recall the old Lee Atwater admonition to the GOP that the country was changing and their habit of screaming the N-word as they did back in the 50s and then moderating to to talk about “busing” or “welfare” wasn’t going to work forever. Well, this is about to be tested, big time. Trump is openly channeling Adolph Hitler. Republicans are going after one of their biggest non-white stars. It’s only a matter of time before he says the n-word in public. Mark my words.
Happy Hollandaise everyone. Buckle up …