Thank Donald Trump For Exposing How Racism Defines The Republican Party

 

So racism is okay but disrespecting a war veteran is not?  

 

The obnoxious Donald Trump has exposed the extent to which the Republican Party still tolerates and promotes bigotry. The party and many of its top leaders appeal to the most base inclinations of right wing supporters.

 

When Donald Trump recently declared his run for the White House this is what he had to say about Mexicans who come into the country: “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapist and some, I assume, are good people.”

 

A blanket bigoted statement when in fact there are millions of hard-working Mexicans engaged in low-wage employment; some perform jobs that many people would not, including as farm workers in Florida and California.

 

 

Donald Trump has made a career at hateful comments. He made a fool of himself going around claiming that President Obama was in fact born in Kenya not in the United States. He also once said “I get along with the Blacks.”

Even then, the Republican establishment, desperate to win the White House in 2012 went along with Trump. Candidate Mitt Romney accepted his endorsement; Romney himself in one of his campaign appearances said he was born in the U.S., playing to the lunatic birther crowd.

 

 

So it should have been no surprise that many Republican leaders were reluctant to condemn Trump after his ugly comments about Mexicans. 

 

It was only after Trump’s recent comments about Senator John McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate and Vietnam war veteran, that many Republican leaders were up in arms.

Trump, at a Republican Presidential forum yesterday in Ames, Iowa, said of John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he got captured. I like people  

who weren’t captured.”

 

This time the condemnations of Trump’s comments came quickly. 

 

“I unequivocally denounce him,” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has said. He had been unwilling to condemn Trump’s comments about Mexicans.

 

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina reacted by saying voters in the nominating states are going to tell Trump “‘Donald Trump you’re fired.'”

 

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, who to his credit had been vocal in his criticism of Trump says the loudmouth candidate’s remarks about McCain should disqualify him from a White House run. “Donald Trump owes every American veteran and in particular John McCain an apology,” Perry said.

 

These United States of America are being transformed demographically before our eyes.

Yet the Republican party still has leaders who live in a different era. 

 

The Republican party for many years has appealed to nativism and racism.

 

It took the horrific massacre of nine worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, for many of the Republican leaders to wake up and suddenly support the removal of the flag, the symbol of hate and a period of enslavement of Black people. 

 

How can any serious party continue to have a vision that does not fully embrace African Americans and Latinos in the 21st Century?

 

Working to control illegal immigration and fighting racism are not mutually exclusive. 

 

In fact the Obama administration has been criticized for having deported a record number of undocumented immigrants; while at the same time pushing for comprehensive immigration.

The president signed an executive order to provide relief for millions of undocumented immigrants absent comprehensive reform.

 

The challenge presented by illegal immigration and how to regularize the status of the millions already in the United States will never be dealt with through the kind of bigotry that Trump excels in. 

 

Yet, Trump’s tirades have been useful in reminding everybody that appeals to bigotry defines the Republican party.