From a flawed premise, it’s easy to reach a silly conclusion. The New Republic’s Jeet Heer proved that in a Thursday piece in which he argued that “racism [is now] integral to right-wing ideology” and that therefore Donald Trump is authentically conservative -- a “natural evolutionary product” of long-term trends in movement conservatism.
“If Republican voters were anywhere near as diverse as the Democrats’, a candidate like Trump would have been marginalized quickly,” contended Heer. “Conservative elites can denounce Trump all they want as a ‘cancer’ or an impostor. In truth, he is their true heir, the beneficiary of the policies the party has pursued for more than half a century.”
From Heer’s article (bolding added):
Republican elites persist in treating [Trump] as an interloper, a fake conservative…
But there is another way of looking at Trump:…[as] the natural evolutionary product of Republican platforms and strategies that stretch back to the very origins of modern conservatism in the 1950s and 1960s.
Polling in South Carolina…reveals the single most salient difference between Trump’s supporters and those of his rivals: They are much more likely to endorse white ethnic nationalism and to express nostalgia for traditional Southern racism. In light of this polling, Trump’s campaign can best be understood not as an outlier but as the latest manifestation of the Southern Strategy…
…Instead of relying on old, worn-out dog whistles about welfare queens and states’ rights, Trump has updated racial paranoia for the 21st century…
It’s essential to remember that the Southern Strategy did not originate with cynical GOP pols and right-wing extremists, but was—ironically enough—first hammered out in the pages of National Review…
…Before the magazine made Southern racism integral to right-wing ideology, Northern conservatives affiliated with the Republican Party felt no need to oppose civil-rights measures—and certainly no impetus to take the side of preserving Jim Crow segregation…
…The [Republican] party had changed so much in 1964 that even Nixon, who had been liberal on civil rights before the Goldwater takeover, adopted the Southern Strategy in 1968 and 1972. Dixie would be the new heartland for the Republican Party…
…If Republican voters were anywhere near as diverse as the Democrats’, a candidate like Trump would have been marginalized quickly. Conservative elites can denounce Trump all they want as a “cancer” or an impostor. In truth, he is their true heir, the beneficiary of the policies the party has pursued for more than half a century.
