Did voters knowingly opt to elect racist Rep.?

Republican Rep. David Stringer was caught —again — speaking in the language of a racist xenophobe.

What does that say about the people who elected him? Is supporting someone who uses such language as bad as speaking it?

Stringer wasn’t simply elected, he was re-elected, after voters in his district learned all about him.

The Republican voters who dominate Legislative District 1 re-elected Stringer even after he received wide media coverage last summer over a racist diatribe about how there weren’t “enough white kids to go around” and how immigration was an “existential threat” to the country.

Now, Stringer is back speaking with disturbing ignorance, if not brazen bigotry, in an audio obtained by the Phoenix New Times.

In this instance, Stringer says African-Americans “don’t blend in.”

He described the difference between African-Americans and Americans of European ancestry, saying, “After their second or third generation, everybody looks the same. Everybody talks the same. That’s not the case with African-Americans and other racial groups because they don’t melt in. They don’t blend in. They always look different.”

When a student asked him whether looking different mattered, Stringer said, ”I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

None of this should be surprising. The words may be different but the sentiments expressed by Stringer are exactly the same as those he expressed during the summer.

And yet, according to the last count by the secretary of state’s office, Stringer received 67,023 votes in District 1, which encompasses Prescott and surrounding communities.

He was overwhelmingly re-elected. Not only that, but Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers made Stringer the chair of the Committee on Sentencing & Recidivism Reform.

Only after Stringer’s latest ugly remarks became public did Bowers strip Stringer of the post.

But why put him there in the first place?

Bowers — and every other Republican — knew what Stringer said last summer.

But it was only after this new audio surfaced that Bowers said, “Representative Stringer’s comments are vile and won’t be tolerated.” Really?

He seems to have been tolerated plenty.

Likewise, State Republican Party Chairman Jonathan Lines issued a statement saying Stringer’s “racist commentary ... can only be attributed to a perspective that is out of touch with reality.”

Again, really?

Because Stringer seems perfectly in touch with the reality of Republican voters in District 1.

What do Chairman Lines or Speaker Bowers have to say about those 67,023 voters who apparently decided that Stringer’s comments are NOT “vile” and WILL be “tolerated.”

And elected him.

Voters in each party tend to forgive, ignore or deny some of the flaws possessed by their candidates. But I didn’t hear the GOP say that voting for a person like Stringer, who uses racist xenophobic language, is “out of touch with reality.”

A number of bigwigs have called for Stringer to resign.

What about the men and women who voted for him?

Are they still welcomed in the GOP? (It’s possible a few Democrats also voted for Stringer in the general election, of course. But is there anyone who would put that number at more than a few?)

If Republican bigwigs don’t want Stringer in the GOP, why would they want Stringer’s voters?

Or is it only those who say racist, xenophobic things in public they don’t want, while those who quietly support such people are perfectly OK?