The Trumpster Fire is burning a hole in the GOP’s belly — and that’s a good thing.
Trump, by running an openly racist and bigoted campaign, has so alienated a large swatch of the electorate, even counting many Republicans - he has the highest "I'd never vote for this person" ratings of any major candidate - that Republican strategists are worried that his winning the nomination would disgust saner Republicans so much that it’d kill the party down the rest of the ballot, just as it is in a race to lock down power via Jim Crow and gerrymandering before changing demographics can do it in. (And the gerrymandering is failing in the courts, one state at a time; Virginia and Florida’s 2016 congressional maps are all but guaranteed to give at least three GOP seats to the Democrats.)
Furthermore, he is forcing the "both sides do it" press and pundits to drop that particular pretense and not only state unequivocally that a Republican presidential candidate is running on racism, but inch ever closer to admitting that the Republican Party's entire platform is based on using racism to get white working-class and middle-class Americans to vote against their own best economic interests. Hell, Cynthia Tucker actually uttered (or rather, typed) the forbidden phrase "Southern strategy" today!
The Trumpy similarities of the GOP’s presidential candidates are emphasized by the fact that every single one of his Republican opponents has, at least once during the past six months of the Trump Ascendancy, tried to win back Trump-bedazzled Republican base voters by trying to out-bigot him. The problem for them is that not only are they failing to cut into Trump's support, they're giving Hillary Clinton plenty of ammunition to use against them in the general election, making it much harder for them to pivot back towards the center in a fashion that general election voters will believe.
Trump also serves as a reality check for people who think that working-class white voters who vote Republican can be consistently won over by Democrats who use economic appeals. Trump does his best among working-class whites. Trump's and other Republicans' proposals would hurt the pocketbooks of these voters, yet they don't care so long as nonwhites are hurt more. We saw that in the Kentucky gubernatorial election, where most white voters thought along the lines of this woman:
BOONEVILLE — The 66 percent of Owsley County that gets health coverage through Medicaid now must reconcile itself with the 70 percent that voted for Republican Governor-elect Matt Bevin, who pledged to cut the state's Medicaid program and close the state-run Kynect health insurance exchange.
Lisa Botner, 36, belongs to both camps. A Kynector — a state agent representing Kynect in the field — recently helped Botner sign up for a Wellcare Medicaid card for herself and her 7-year-old son. Without that, Botner said, she couldn't afford the regular doctor's visits and blood tests needed to keep her hyperthyroidism in check.
"If anything changed with our insurance to make it more expensive for us, that would be a big problem," Botner, a community college student, said Friday at the Owsley County Public Library, where she works. "Just with the blood tests, you're talking maybe $1,000 a year without insurance."
Yet two weeks earlier, despite his much-discussed plans to repeal Kynect and toughen eligibility requirements for Medicaid, she voted for Bevin.
"I'm just a die-hard Republican," she said.
No, Trump isn’t making America more racist. Trump’s bringing America’s racist id to the surface — its racist Republican id — where it can be fought more easily. (I doubt that this was his intent, but it’s what’s been happening all the same.) The code words Republicans have used to hide behind are now no longer operative, as he’s exposed the bigotry backing them.
The Trumpster Fire: Doing to the GOP what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore. Only more so.