In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville this weekend, conservative columnists, pundits and politicians have gone out of their way to say that the aims of the white supremacists are not the goals of the traditional conservative movement. In fact, they say, the alt-right is trying to destroy the traditional right. That may be true, but according to polls, almost 74% of Republicans support Donald Trump and Donald Trump is responsible for the rise of the white supremacists who have infected their party.
In North Carolina, traditional conservatives stayed silent when the GOP enacted laws protecting monuments celebrating the Confederacy. We heard little from them when the House passed a bill to protect drivers who run over protesters. They’ve created the mythical voter fraud to justify their support of voter suppression laws clearly targeted at African-Americans. They stay silent as the UNC Board of Governors cripples the Center for Civil Rights. They can rationalize that somehow each of these positions follows their conservative ideology but they need to also accept that they empower white supremacists.
We should applaud Marco Rubio, John McCain, Cory Gardner and others for calling out the racists in Charlottesville and even criticizing Trump for his weak response. Republicans need to realize that they are in a bad place when we need to applaud what should be the de facto response. Now, we need to see some sort of action.
Donald Trump has encouraged these white supremacists since he entered the political fray. They were the original Trumpsters, cheering on his birther campaign with all its racist overtones. This weekend, prominent white supremacist David Duke said the Charlottesville rally was “fulfilling the promise of Donald Trump.” After Trump refused to condemn the Nazis and Klan at the rally, the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, called his remarks, “Really, really good.” Clearly, they feel empowered and vindicated by Trump.
Right now, Republicans hold unprecedented political power. They control both Houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, 35 governorships, and both houses of the legislature in 34 states. If Trump and the white supremacists are to be contained, it’s up to them and they need to do more than offer words. They need to take action and recognize that a wink-and-a-nod to racists is unacceptable. They need to show us, not just tell us, that they are outraged.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
“Impeachment?” Since when is opposition to the far left’s political agenda a high crime and misdemeanor?
Not today. Your fellow travelers are killing and injuring people.
You haven’t been paying attention. Your hero is a traitorous sexual predator who has a bromance with an enemy of the United States. He has laundered money for the largest criminal syndicate in the world.
He uses the presidency as a marketing tool for his real estate business in violation of his own promise to divest himself of conflicts of interest, the emoluments clause and written agreements prohibiting the conflicts. There has never been a president, until this one, who pimps the flag and our highest office for personal gain.
You are in love with a criminal and a pervert who claims to be Republican. Your hero is taking the world to the brink of thermonuclear war while alienating every friendly country we have ever befriended.
He has called his daughter a “great piece of ass,” cheated on each of his wives repeatedly. He and his wife have appeared in pornography, which you apparently condone. He called his daughter “a great piece of ass.”
He is incapable of doing the work of the presidency. He is so consumed with his own vanity that he cannot stop watching himself in the mirror. He will not read, and he is oppressively lazy and woefully ignorant.
Trump admitted to obstructing justice on the air with cameras rolling. When criminals admit their crimes, there is no reasonable doubt.
He has followed the Watergate script by firing anyone who attempts to investigate him, a strategy that will fail. Each and every time he does so, he adds another obstruction of justice charge to the accumulating list.
The United States is in the midst of an existential crisis. You need to get out of the way while Patriots and decent people try to solve the crisis you and your ilk created. Maybe, one day we can play your silly games again, but we have work to do, and you aren’t helping. It doesn’t matter whether you are willfully ignorant or actually as clueless as you claim. Today is not a good day to act like you don’t know what you know.
Jay, you just summed it all up.
They can objectively condemn racism, bigotry, and hatred. They lament on and on about how horrible and terrible these travesties are in the aftermath of their occurrence. Until it’s election time or there is a need for support and money.
Donald Trump began his love affair with the Alt-Right two years ago or more when he was the mouthpiece for the birther movement. He saw the value of hate and inciting violence against those of a different ideology. In the Republican primary race last year, Donald Trump ran to the right of Ted Cruz; which is no easy feat. So in the wisdom of election year politics, you run to the right in the primary and come back to the center going into the general election…Donald Trump forgot that step in the process. He stayed over on the right.
He has no plans of leaving the comfort of that place either. If he did, Steve Bannon would no longer occupy a position of anything anywhere inside the Washington beltway. Bannon however as the self acclaimed voice of the Alt-Right movement has the President’s ear, his mind, and influences the manner in which this President formulates his responses to every emergency, domestic and international, that rises in front of him. A legend in his own mind. A tough talking gutless wonder who is brave as hell when the blood at risk isn’t his own or anyone in his family.
During the election, that position fostered violence against protesters and those who disagreed. Post election, it has now empowered those on the Alt-Right as being true in their beliefs because they have a President who is with them. Their views, opinions, and the actions bred of those ideals has been quantified in the persona of Bigot in Chief.
I guess we’ll wait on the next catastrophe to see if the ones prior have had any effect moving toward sanity. I doubt it.
Given the conduct so far from most of the GOP, whether it be rank and file members or elected officials at all levels, the likelihood of any significant ethical or moral stand against the white supremacists , Neo-Nazis, and Fascists seems unrealistic to me. I refer not simply to their words but their actions. Their responses to the latest outrage in Charlottesville seemed to me to be an attempt to distinguish themselves from Trump.