GOP silence in response to Trump’s racism is deafening
WASHINGTON >> Donald Trump’s presidency is melting down into a noxious stew of racism and failure. With breathtaking cynicism, the Republican Party pretends not to notice.
Trump knew there’d be outrage over his Sunday tweet admonishing four progressive members of Congress, all women of color, that they should stop “telling the people of the United States … how our government is to be run” and instead “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Trump’s motives are obvious: He’s displaying his white-supremacist racist views, drawing a line between his aging white political base and everyone else. But why now? Probably to distract from Thursday’s surrender of his quest to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census.
“Trump is a racist” isn’t exactly news. But the silence from Republicans is staggering — and telling. It’s essentially collaboration with Trump’s assault on diversity and pluralism. In the coming campaign, Republican candidates at every level will claim to embrace Americans of all races. Do not believe them. Their failure to speak out now tells us everything we need to know.
The upside of this disgrace is that while Trump hoped to further divide squabbling Democrats, he brought them together.
The four House members he attacked — Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. — have sparred with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and much of the Democratic leadership on some issues. Calling themselves “the Squad,” they fought Pelosi’s approach on funding border security. They display none of the meekness expected of firstterm members.
Trump’s attack caused Pelosi and others to rush to the Squad’s defense. Apparently living in a bizarro parallel universe, Trump on Monday insisted those he attacked owe an apology.
The reaction from Republicans? Still crickets.
There’s nothing new about the Republican Party playing footsie with racists, going back to the “southern strategy” pioneered by Richard Nixon. But Trump has toppled the traditional pillars of Republican philosophy — fiscal responsibility, free trade, markets undistorted by government interference, muscular foreign policy, equal opportunity for all to pursue the American Dream — the GOP is reduced to being the party of no: no on abortion, no on immigration and no on diversity. Republican politicians appeal to voters by stoking fear about what will happen if “they” — the Democrats — gain power.
“They” are portrayed as perhaps being intellectuals, women, African American or Latino or Asian American. “They” are portrayed as the kind of affluent, highand-mighty people who look down on “ordinary” Republican voters — never mind that Ocasio-Cortez waited tables to support herself, Tlaib grew up in a struggling family in Detroit, Pressley’s father was incarcerated during much of her childhood and Omar came to this country from a Somali refugee camp.
The wedge he is trying to drive, with his attacks on the Squad, is essentially white vs. non-white. He also seeks to portray them as immigrants, telling them to “go back” to where they came from, even though Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Tlaib in Detroit and Ocasio-Cortez in New York. Omar, indeed, is an immigrant — a naturalized citizen with the same rights and responsibilities as any other American, including Trump.
If Republicans believed any of their rhetoric, they’d be all over Trump. They’d tell him that “telling the people of the United States … how our government is to be run” is the right of every American and the duty of every member of Congress. Instead, Republicans embrace Trump’s racism and xenophobia. Blame them as much as Trump.