Jen
shared this video on Monday, but it's worth
revisiting the scene.
A group of Donald Trump supporters erupted in cheers and shouted racist comments outside an Iowa college stadium on Saturday when a woman tore the sign an anti-Trump demonstrator was holding in half. [...]
The woman who attacked the sign is from West Des Moines but is not an ISU student, according to the Iowa State Daily. She has since deleted her social media accounts. A moment before she rips the sign, she can be heard in a video saying that she's going to destroy the poster and "vote for white supremacy."
These events
keep happening at
Trump events. Whether they don't happen at the rallies for other Republican candidates because those candidates attract
different supporters or just don't attract as many protesters is unclear, but it keeps happening.
Dallas:
The most enthusiastic applause was for [Trump's] pledge to stop illegal immigration. “It’s a massive problem. We have to stop illegal immigration. We have to do it,” he said to a prolonged standing ovation and chants of “USA!” [...]
As it ended, attendees filing out, mostly white, clashed with 200 or so lingering protesters, mostly black and Hispanic. Police intervened in several heated exchanges, including some involving members of the Black Lives Matter movement. “Blue lives matter,” chanted several young Trump supporters.
It seems clear that Trump has sewn up the racist vote. There's no debate over that, and it's tough news for Ted Cruz especially, who tried to run as the xenophobic anti-immigrant candidate but was never able to seal the deal for reasons I'll leave you to suss out on your own. But Trump hasn't just sewn up that vote, he's emboldened the Republican Party's unapologetic racists to a degree that hasn't been seen in decades. These are the people that the party usually courts with dog whistles, but the rise of the tea party and politicians like Steve King have sent them completely off the rails. They don't want the subtle approach. They want to get in a brown person's face and let them know exactly what they think of them.
The big electoral question is how large a percentage of the party that represents. We know that it is substantial: we can use the recent poll revealing that 43 percent of Republicans still believe President Obama is a secret Muslim as indication that at least 43 percent of the party is either racist or at least willing to believe racism-based, racist-originated conspiracy theories. That is a huge number of people—all primed for exactly what Trump is selling. One can charitably assume Trump has plenty of supporters who are not racists, but attracted to him either through his celebrity status or, ahem, other "ideas"; given that it's not at all hard to see a path to the Republican nomination.
Which sets up an astonishing general election between a campaign predicated on open anti-immigrant xenophobia supported by America's loudest, most extremist racist elements and, well, anyone who is alarmed by that. The entire nation has been waiting for the outrageous thing out of Donald Trump's mouth that would finally put an end to his bizarre, openly narcissistic, almost entirely contentless campaign. It hasn't happened yet. Every extremist thing he says, whether openly racist or openly misogynist or whether it is based on absolute ignorance of foreign policy, law, or what have you, only makes the base like him more.
Even Republican Party leaders have to be beside themselves with worry over that. One would hope, anyway. It's also possible that so long as it allows the party to win, they'll be fine with it.
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