Republicans Are Closing Ugly
· The Atlantic
Faced with flagging numbers over an unpopular and unnecessary war in Iran, inflation exacerbated by tariffs, lawless immigration enforcement, and corruption, Republicans have gone back to basics for their closing message: stoking hatred against minority groups.
The Michigan Senate campaign between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has been particularly ugly. Rogers has accused El-Sayed—without any evidence—of being “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood.” At a recent rally, J. D. Vance said El-Sayed harbored “anti-white racial hate,” and President Trump called him a “jihadist” who would need to go through a “metal detector” to enter the Senate. The only time in recent memory that the Senate was subject to political violence, it is worth noting, is when Trump himself incited an attack on it.
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This kind of rhetoric has spilled over into Ohio, where Republican Senator Bernie Moreno asked at a rally whether El-Sayed knew that “Jesus came here for our salvation.” The Founding Fathers were committed to religious freedom, and embedded no religious test for public office in the Constitution. That’s actually good news for Republicans, because their nominee for governor of Ohio is Vivek Ramaswamy, who is Hindu.
Republican attacks elsewhere have also focused on vulnerable minorities. Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson has accused her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, of voting “to allow government employees to help their kids change their gender at school and keep it secret from the parents.” Anti-trans ads are a GOP staple in Texas, where Republicans backing the Senate candidate Ken Paxton have tried to turn allegations of corruption and infidelity into a positive by attacking Democrat James Talarico’s masculinity. Also in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who’s in a close race with Democrat Gina Hinojosa, has accused his Catholic opponent of supporting “Sharia law.” On Halloween, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted a fake costume for a “SNAP fraudster,” complete with handcuffs and piles of “taxpayers cash,” that was little more than a racist stereotype about Black people.
[David A. Graham: Islamophobia is Trump’s closing midterm gambit]
All of this has coincided with Trump’s usual race-baiting about immigration. Pointing to unrest in France, the president posted on his social network that “the immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country.” The idea that there was no history of violent protest in France before immigrants got there is—well, let’s say you have to know very little about France to believe that one. Still, the message is pretty clear: If you let people who aren’t white into your country, you will get riots. Trump made himself even clearer at a rally in Kansas, saying, “Dumocrats are the party of anti-Western, Marxist, and hostile Third World migrants.”
Overt bigotry is nothing new for Trump or the Trump-era Republican Party. One reason the GOP is betting the House and Senate on this approach working is that the electorate has not rebuked it often or forcefully enough. Republicans didn’t draw the line when Trump called Somalis “garbage” or when he slandered Haitian immigrants as pet eaters. (When former President Barack Obama said Trump made the White House look like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” however, that was outrageous—“super elitist,” according to Vance.)
Put simply, bigotry remains a large part of American politics because some American voters like it, and many others do not find it disqualifying. If Republicans thought this kind of talk was politically ineffective, they would not engage in it.
[From the June 2019 issue: An oral history of Trump’s bigotry]
MAGA has historically bet on white identity politics to mobilize white voters in large enough numbers to give Republicans an insurmountable advantage in the Senate and Electoral College. To this end, right-wing candidates have tried to make fears of minority groups as salient as possible every election cycle, even if it requires senseless conspiracy theories. In 2024, Trump won over more Black and Hispanic voters than in the past, making it seem as if the one weakness in that strategy—that nonwhite voters would be repelled by it—could be surmounted. (That year was a particular economic environment, however, and it’s possible Republicans overinterpreted those results as a more profound endorsement than they really were.)
But at this point, Americans should recognize this campaign for the cynical gambit that it is. Trump’s scapegoating has not solved any problems. It has not brought down inflation or the cost of living; it has not raised wages or led to greater job growth. The only winners of the Trump administration are his family members, whose wealth has grown since he took office, and industries that have enjoyed favorable regulatory decisions or lavish tax cuts. For those at the top, bigotry provides a justification for unearned advantages—while for those at the bottom, it can serve as an explanation for life’s disappointments. One thing it can’t do, though, is provide the broad-based prosperity Trump promises.
At the turn of the 19th century, the populist Tom Watson wrote that Black and white laborers were “kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism that enslaves you both.” Tragically, Watson later abandoned this insight—he became an arch racist and anti-Semite. The bigger tragedy is that more than a century later, a major political party is still trying to make this scam work.