First, it was former KKK Wizard David Duke who endorsed GOP front-runner Donald Trump. Trump at first notably refused to repudiate his support. Cartoonists had a field day. Then, since Trump has become the ultimate truth-challenged candidate, he blamed the whole thing on a lousy earpiece (and his loyal supporters on Twitter and some conservative blogs rushed to his defense saying, why, yes, that explained it, or could have explained it — which is giving also giving him a pass).
Now yet another KKK leader has endorsed Trump. This is part of the new Trump GOP’s new emerging coalition. The old Southern strategy harvested genuine resentments about LBJ’s Great Society federal government telling states what to do and also was a welcoming call for racists to join the party, delivered via various rhetorical, dog whistles.
Trump has abandoned the dog whistles.
Now it’s an air horn.
You can sure see Trump’s emerging coalition grow:
In a sit-down interview with a Richmond news station, the Imperial Wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is his candidate for President.
The KKK leader, identified by WWBT only as “Imperial Wizard,” also insisted his organization is not a hate group, telling the station’s black anchor, “We don’t hate anyone.”
Nah. Hate and the KKK? They all must have lousy earpieces…
Asked who he was supporting in the 2016 race, the wizard replied: “I think Donald Trump would be best for the job.”
“The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes in, we believe in. We want our country to be safe,” he said.
The leader went on to say if Trump were to drop out, he would back Ohio Gov. John Kasich before Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), saying Cruz “is not an American citizen” because he was born in Canada.
….While the Imperial Wizard said Obama’s presidency has been “a very good recruiting tool,” he said it’s because of Obama’s politics, not his race.
“We are not white supremacists, we’re white separatists,” the leader said on camera. “We’re not the big bad hate group people think we are.”
It’s all a misunderstanding.
Will Trump totally repudiate this? He’ll likely hedge. But it almost makes no difference anymore.
There are some GOPers who will be outraged, but in the past week you could see a clear movement to many GOP elites to support Trump. The talk show host stampede to Trump has begun. The ostensible reason for the movement towards Trump is as much as he has lowered the bar on campaigning decorum, verbal decency in our political discussion, and almost stripped political debate of content to make it one big Twitter feed, is to stop Hillary Clinton — but its really all about the party wanting to win and members of a political tribe wanting to defeat the opposition political tribe. Plus, Trump now says he could win without GOP unity (subtext: so to hell with GOPers who won’t support him, he’ll win anyway with his new coalition).
The fascinating thing to watch will be on the Democratic Party’s far left where a new narrative has begun among some Bernie Sanders supporters: that Donald Trump would be preferable to Hillary Clinton. Salon had an article which provoked a bunch of why, yes, the case could be made to vote for Trump — among progressives on Twitter, blogs and in comments sections.
I’ve often noted how principles mean nothing in 21st century American politics. They are to be uttered to make a politician, writer or a political entertainer look good. But they are jettisoned super quickly for expediency or political revenge. It’s hard to see how a real progressive could vote for Donald Trump unless he adamantly and definitively repudiated the support of the KKK. But, then, it’s hard to see how a real progressive could support someone who wants to build a border wall, ban Muslims from entering the United States and referred to Mexicans as rapists.
Hard. But not impossible.
People will jump through all kinds of mental hoops to justify it (including the argument among some progressives that if Clinton loses to Trump then Sanders can run and win in 2020. Forget that silly, irrelevant Supreme Court…).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.