If you want to know whether Republicans will truly move heaven and earth to stop Donald Trump from becoming their nominee or will meekly accept him, his xenophobia, his bizarre anti-Constitutional ideas, and so on, look no further than the efforts to pooh-pooh away The Actual Freaking Klan after Trump could not quite find it in his heart, during a CNN interview, to fully condemn David Duke-style white supremacy.
Republican and fellow insane person Texas Gov. Greg Abbott demurred when asked whether Trump should distance himself from white supremacists: “That’s up to him. I don’t know what the message is.” Former fellow candidate Mike Huckabee says this unfortunate mix-up is probably just because as a Northerner, Trump just doesn't understand that racism can be kinda bad.
“Here’s the thing. I doubt he is as sensitive about just how deplorable David Duke is to many of us in the South," Huckabee said. "I think because I’m from the South, I’m more sensitive and frankly more repulsed by racism than maybe people who didn’t grow up here."
Former congresscritter Ron Paul, who has a bit of a history with these things himself, says the Klan is old news ("They've been marginalized, nobody cares about them"), and the media is just "trapping" Trump by asking him to disavow white supremacists. Because, apparently, that's what passes for a trick question these days.
Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for his part, said he found Trump's response "disqualifying and disgusting." So which side would prominent conservative media wags like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham take? Trump's, of course. "Obama could have written this" was the terse reply from Carlson.
If you want a taste of peak conservative Trump-polishing, though, look to Fox News. The conservative network’s Juan Williams was not impressed with Trump's apparent wishy-washiness towards actual declared white supremacy:
“I don’t think you can excuse this kind of behavior where you just conveniently close your eyes,” Williams, who is African American, said. “In this moment, right before the SEC primary, he finds it convenient not to disavow.”
Which caused quite the uproar among the rest of the on-air punditry, who rushed to Trump's defense using the hoariest of all conservative pundit responses: Simply declaring that the whole thing was a conspiracy and that the new facts are whatever we say they are.
The longest lecture came from Melissa Frances, who blamed the media for badgering Trump. “Now he’s been badgered repeatedly on the same front,” she said. “At the beginning of that interview we saw he said ‘I don’t support David Duke. No, no, no.’ And they kept asking him the question until they said something that can kind of be used.”
It’s unclear what interview Frances was referring to because he did not disavow Duke during the CNN interview at issue.
Donald Trump has been retweeting memes from Twitter white supremacists for a while now. White supremacist literature has popped up in his rallies. Confederate flags pop up as well. Even cursory interviews with Donald Trump supporters at those events seem to invariably bring out xenophobic crackpotisms much akin to Trump's own behind-the-microphone versions.
And all of it is eminently conservative. Again, Trump is dabbling in circles no different from those travelled by top Republican legislators like Steve Scalise, and Donald Trump's entire anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim push is cribbed wholesale from the dominant Steve King branch of the party, the one now overrun with "tea party" types that see melon-calved drug mules in every southern desert, and creeping sharia in every bathroom sink.
It's understandable that any Republican strategist worth their salt would want to distance themselves from Trump's record of race-baiting and overt calls for ethnic or religious purging—or, at least, appear to. They're concerned about the party's survival.
But you'll note it's not actually happening, because the segment of the party that is just fine with Trump—or at least is willing to live with him if it becomes the only path to beating insert-Democratic-name-here—is far, far bigger than the group that thinks maybe, at long last, the party might be going too far.
