Shortly after 5 PM Monday, Robinson’s column for Tuesday’s Washington Post, titled Republicans embrace Trump’s racism. Blame them as much as him., went live.
It is well worth the read.
Robinson begins with a two-sentence paragraph
Donald Trump’s presidency is melting down into a noxious stew of racism, failure and farce. With breathtaking cynicism, the Republican Party pretends not to notice.
and he is off to the races.
He thinks Trump may have chosen to start this pie fight to distract from his “humiliating surrender” surrender on the issue of the citizenship question on the census.
We then read the following paragraph, one of several that are powerful and cut to the heart of the matter:
“Trump is a racist” does not exactly qualify as breaking news. But the silence from prominent Republicans is staggering — and telling. It amounts to collaboration — perhaps “collusion” is a better word — with the president’s assault on diversity and pluralism. In the coming campaign, you will hear Republican candidates at every level claim to be colorblind and embrace all Americans regardless of race or ethnicity. Do not believe them. Their failure to speak out now tells us everything we need to know about their true feelings.
I really like that invocation of “collusion.”
The next such paragraph occurs after a brief discussion of the internecine dispute between Pelosi and the Squad that had been consuming news cycles, with Robinson noting that Trump’s bluster had had the effect of uniting the Dems. After noting the continued crickets from the Republicans on Trump’s rhetoric, Robinson writes
There’s nothing new about the Republican Party playing footsie with racists, going all the way back to the “Southern strategy” pioneered by Richard M. Nixon. But as 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. Following Trump’s lead, the party practices the politics of resentment. Republican politicians appeal to voters not by stoking optimism about what can be accomplished but by stoking fear about what will happen if “they” — the Democrats — gain power.
Clearly we heard that today from Lindsey Graham, with his invocation of communism against the four Freshmen Congresswomen of color.
Robinson goes on to directly label Trump’s politics as racist, intended to pit white against non-white, before getting to this final paragraph:
If Republicans believed even a fraction 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 just as much as Trump.
Republicans embrace Trump’s racism and xenophobia.
Indeed, as we have seen in communication from a number of House Republicans, from Senator Steve Daines of MT, and of course from Rush Limbaugh.
So as to those Republicans who have not, even now, spoken out forcefully against this, Robinson’s final line is more than appropriate:
Blame them just as much as Trump0.
Indeed.