The Republican front-runner keeps inchingcloser to all-out fascism — assuming that youdon’t believe he’s already there, camped out androasting marshmallows.
(I don’t even use that man’s name in mycolumns anymore. That avoidance can drivesome readers crazy, but he drives me crazy, sothere, we’re even.)The most recent movement in that directioncame in a campaign release that said he was“calling for a total and complete shutdown ofMuslims entering the United States until ourcountry’s representatives can figure out what isgoing on.”Not only would this prohibition becompletely impractical and xenophobic, inpractice it would most likely be racist. But whenhas that ever bothered this man? Right, never.
Much of what rolls off that tongue is drippingwith poison.
Condemnation of this anti-Muslim rhetoricwas swift and broad. Predictably, liberals andcivil libertarians condemned the comments.
But so did the Republican establishment,finally. (In general, they keep hoping andpraying that he will eventually flame out anda “serious” candidate will take his place. Theyalso want him to exit the race with good feelingsand not mount a third-party run that wouldbasically guarantee a Democratic victory.)Speaker Paul Ryan said at the HouseRepublican leadership’s weekly newsconference, “This is not conservatism.”Maybe it’s not traditional conservatism,but it is modern Republicanism, or at least alarge enough portion of it to make the mostinflammatory Republican candidate the mostliked Republican candidate.
Ryan continued: “What was proposedyesterday is not what this party stands for and,more importantly, it’s not what this countrystands for.”I’m not sure which party Ryan has beenpaying attention to for the last decade, but to myeye and ear, extreme rhetoric is increasinglybecoming intrinsic to the Republican Party.
The front-runner is simply saying out loud whatmany conservatives are feeling — he’s notSvengali; he’s a crowd reader.
The truth is that even candidates with moregraceful language and elegant delivery than thecurrent front-runner express views that soundeerily similar to his.
To think about how this all came to be in thispolitical cycle we have to examine how thefront-runner became the front-runner.
You see, this is what happens when the mediaplays footsie with a demagogue. This all started,I believe, as a sideshow. The media exploitedthe man for ratings — they saw an entertainingjester prone to outlandishness who suppliedairtime and column inches, and he exploitedthe media to fill his bottomless pit of emotionalneed and to stroke his immense ego. For him, itwas a branding exercise, something interestingto do that might help sell a few more shiny ties orincrease his leverage for licensing his name tomore real estate.
Everyone was fully aware of the incestuousrelationship. It was all about money, moneyfrom ratings and name recognition.
But something happened, rather quickly: Themedia realized that it had to keep feeding thebeast it had created, and the real estate developerstarted to believe his own bluster — he startedto believe that he could actually win and, moreimportant, realized that he wanted to win.
Now just a couple of months from the earliestcontests, he has held front-runner status —often by overwhelming margins — for muchof the time he’s been in the race, even as he hasweathered several controversies. Indeed, itappears that many of his supporters like himbecause of his controversial statements, not inspite of them.
You see, it is not only about the head of thissnake, but also the body.
Bloomberg reported that a BloombergPolitics/Purple Strategies PulsePoll, anonline survey conducted Tuesday, showed“almost two-thirds of likely 2016 Republicanprimary voters favor” the front-runner’s “callto temporarily ban Muslims from entering theU.S., while more than a third say it makes themmore likely to vote for him.”The leader of the Republican presidentialfield may know more about the currentRepublican Party’s sensibility than theRepublican speaker of the House.
This ability to connect has only fed the frontrunner’smegalomania and buttressed his senseof invincibility. Indeed, it seems that the morepeople attack him for his views, the sturdier hissupport becomes, and if you think about it, thatmakes sense.
Attacking the front-runner for what he says islike attacking his supporters themselves, becausehe is voicing their deeply held views. He hasmainstreamed the marginalized and the mocked.
On one hand, the success so far of this frontrunneris a gift from the electoral gods to theDemocratic Party. His winning the Republicannomination would be the best-case scenario, notonly for the presidential race but also for downballotDemocrats.
But the question becomes: How muchdamage will he and his supporters do tothe national dialogue and this country’sinternational standing in the meantime?He is dangerous, but only because he hasenough followers to make him dangerous.
Without them, he would be what he has alwaysbeen: another crass man saying crass things towhich few serious people listened.
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CHARLES M. BLOW>
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