GOP racism

Even Republican voters hate the assholes they elected to Congress.

With Loretta Sanchez running for the U.S. Senate, Orange County's 46th Congressional District is be an open seat in 2016. It's a solidly blue district (D+9), and Obama won it with 59% in 2008 and with 61% in 2012. The district includes Santa Ana, Anaheim and Orange, and the voters are overwhelmingly Hispanic-American and Asian-American.

Part of the reason Trump has shot to the top of the polls-- and has increased his standing while elite journalists and pundits consistently predicted he would implode-- is because media consumers can't get enough of him. He's an outspoken TV celebrity who can get away with saying outrageous things and making up his own facts-- the way Reagan used to do-- and the media covers him as if he were an OJ Simpson car chase. He's great for ratings.

by Oren Jacobson Last January I had the opportunity to travel to Pittsburgh, a city that is a model for American reinvention, and lead a weekend-long training with a group of young progressives. The weekend was the kickoff to a fellowship program designed to prepare emerging leaders to be a force for positive change in the community. As part of the program we run each year we start the process with self-exploration.

The last thing the Republican Party Establishment wanted was a raucous racist primary that highlights the disdain with which Republican candidates view minorities. But the party's angry, confused base had their own ideas-- and plenty of power-mad candidates to pander to them, one of whom is a celebrity TV reality star who knows how to command an audience and daily headlines.It doesn't matter what Reince Priebus wants, or what the GOP's 2012 autopsy mandated, or even-- perhaps (we'll see)-- what the billionaire insurgent Koch family wants.

The GOP sure attracts the nut cases-- Steve Knight, Donald TrumpLindsey Graham was one of the Republican presidential hopefuls yesterday who lashed out at Trump over his pandering to the racists who are celebrating his anti-immigrant mania. "If he becomes the nominee, we’ll get killed," he told CNN yesterday.

Ken Calvert and Will Hurd are just 2 of dozens of Republicans who could lose their seats because of the party's embrace of overt anti-Latino racismWednesday we saw how easy it was easy to trace modern GOP racism back to Ronald Reagan.

It's not that Republicans overlook Ronald Reagan's racism; it's part of why they adore him. My friend Guillaume watched the Fox debate with me. He's from Nîmes, but he follows American politics ardently. "They all want to be Ronald Reagan," he said. "Nothing else? Ceci est tout simplement fou!" When Hannity interviewed Trump (above), one of the softballs he tossed him was who his favorite president was. Trump hasn't lost enough of his marbles yet to say anything but Reagan.

Truman Capote, from his unfinished book Answered Prayers: "In fact, I was a kind of Hershey Bar whore-- there wasn't much I wouldn't do for a nickel's worth of chocolate."Yesterday, the NYTimes fleshed out the conventional wisdom about Trump being a racist and a latter-day Know-Nothing. They pointed out, as an example, that when he wanted to prevent a rival casino from getting into business 15 years ago, he ran ugly ads that said, "The St.

by Oren Jacobson The way Donald Trump’s presidential announcement started revealed everything we need to know about his candidacy. His almost comical escalator ride to the stage from which he delivered his rambling announcement was one part egomaniacal, descending from the heavens to impart his genius upon us, and one part shameless self-promotion. Simply put, it was vintage Donald. Well, sort of.