WAPO OP ED: GOP are Handmaidens of White Supremacy

President Trump has gone in the past several weeks from racist dog whistles to an all-out Confederate bugle call with a rebel yell — and yet his Republican enablers in Congress continue determinedly to cover their ears.

So Trump’s enablers are unnerved by his overt racism — not because it’s despicable on its face but because they fear losing power. And the enablers fret, but in private.

The silence, often attributed to cowardice, is really complicity. As I’ve noted, racial resentment has become the primary driver and predictor of support for the Republican Party, a trend that has accelerated under Trump. If Republican lawmakers continue to “fret privately” as Trump bases his reelection on clumsy racist demagoguery, they must be held to account for condoning the redefinition of the GOP as the new home of the white power movement. Their silence isn’t just enabling Trump; it’s also enabling white supremacy to hijack a major American political party.

On Monday, I emailed the campaigns of the 11 Republican senators who face potentially competitive reelections this year: Susan Collins (Maine), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Kelly Loeffler (Ga.), David Perdue (Ga.), John Cornyn (Texas), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Martha McSally (Ariz.) and Steve Daines (Mont.). (Disclosure: My wife, a Democratic pollster, has clients in the Colorado and Arizona races.)