Trump's racism is particularly outlandish and malignant. As president, his actions are destructive. He is stoking hatred and fears that he should be calming. But he isn't "radically different" than the Republican party of the past years.

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From Our Future

First came Donald Trump's threats to build a massive wall on the U.S border with Mexico. Then the Muslim ban, his disgraceful response to Charlottesville, and his pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Now Trump has amped up his racially divisive politics by rescinding the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program, which shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of US residents who came to the country without documentation as minors.

This remarkable record has led Chris Cillizza and David Brooks to suggest Trump is destroying the modern Republican Party. At CNN, Cillizza declared "DACA decision confirms it: Trump has killed the Bush version of the GOP." Brooks, in his New York Times column in late August, predicted a brutal battle for the party's soul.

Trump's actions and words are particularly noxious, but no one should be misled: Trump's race-bait politics are an expression of the modern Republican Party, not a deviation from it. The battle for its soul has long since been decided.

Brooks spun a lovely fantasy that in the Republican Party he came up in, "it was still possible to be a Republican without feeling like you were violating basic decency on matters of race."

"[R]acism," he wrote, "was not a common feature in the conservative movement."

Brooks worked at conservative magazines like the National Review and the Weekly Standard, and claims he "never heard blatantly racist comments at dinner parties... To be honest, I heard more racial condescension in progressive circles than in conservative ones." He also suggested the GOP only began to change in about 2005.

That's wrong. The modern conservative movement consolidated power through a very intentional strategy that preyed on racial division. The father of the conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, campaigned in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His presidential campaign made South Carolina's notorious Strom Thurmond a lead surrogate in the South. Even amid Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide, the future success of this approach was foretold: outside of his home state of Arizona, the only states Goldwater won were in the deep South.

Richard Nixon further invested in what became known as the "Southern strategy." Ronald Reagan opened his campaign by traveling to hard-to-reach Philadelphia, Mississippi to champion "states rights" in a town known only for the murders of civil rights activists. And, of course, Reagan's mythical "welfare queen" was a racially charged fable. Slowly, whites in the former Confederate states turned to Republicans as the party of white solidarity and racial resentment.

The modern Republican Party's power comes from that transformation of the South. Its congressional delegation is dominated by representatives from the South. Its congressional margin comes from its hold on the South.

Brooks may not have noticed, but his former employer, the National Review, was an early champion of this race-based strategy. As Jeet Heer noted last year in the New Republic, National Review founder William F. Buckley strongly opposed Dwight Eisenhower's enforcement of civil rights laws. In a 1957 editorial, Buckley argued the white community was "entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically" because "for the time being, it is the advanced race."

Over time, these racist appeals became more sophisticated. As Republican operative Lee Atwater put it a notorious 1981 interview, simply saying the N-word would lead to tremendous backlash. "So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract," he said. "Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites."

So Trump isn't an anomaly. He simply updated the GOP playbook for the modern era, and turned the focus of scorn more forcefully onto immigrants and Muslims.

Students of history can plainly see this, but not CNN's Cillizza. He argued the Republican Party is "re-inventing itself" into something "radically different than the party of Bush, McCain, and even Romney." But it was George H.W. Bush that ran the notorious Willy Horton ad, which Atwater produced. Mitt Romney, a personification of the genteel country club Republican, joined all other 2012 Republican presidential candidates in calling for deportation of 10 million undocumented workers, and argued that the government should create conditions so punitive for undocumented immigrants that "self-deportation" would result.

Trump's election tally wasn't an outlier, either. He gained about the same share of the white vote as Romney (58-37 for Trump and 59-39 for Romney) and he was rejected by black and Latino voters by similar margins as well.

When Trump rescinded DACA, he didn't offend the modern Republican tradition. He expressed it. Yes, Trump's racism is particularly outlandish and malignant. As president, his actions are destructive. He is stoking hatred and fears that he should be calming. But he isn't "radically different" than the Republican party of the past years.

Authors Website: http://www.ourfuture.org

Authors Bio:

Robert L. Borosage is the president of the Institute for America's Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America's Future. The organizations were launched by 100 prominent Americans to challenge the rightward drift in U.S. politics, and to develop the policies, message and issue campaigns to help forge an enduring majority for progressive change in America. Most recently, Borosage spearheaded the Campaign's 2006 issues book, StraightTalk 2006, providing activists and candidates with distilled messages on kitchen table concerns, from jobs to affordable health care. Borosage also helped to found and chairs the Progressive Majority Political Action Committee, developing a national base of small donors and skilled activists. Progressive Majority recruits, staffs, and funds progressive candidates for political office.


Mr. Borosage writes widely on political, economic and national security issues for a range of publications including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is a Contributing Editor at The Nation magazine, and a regular contributor to The American Prospect magazine. He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including Fox Morning News, RadioNation, National Public Radio, C-SPAN and Pacifica Radio. He teaches on presidential power and national security as an adjunct professor at American University's Washington School of Law.


A graduate of Yale Law School, with a graduate degree in International Affairs from George Washington University, Borosage left the practice of law to found the Center for National Security Studies in 1974. The Center focused on the tension between civil rights and the national security powers and prerogatives of the executive branch. It played a leading role in the efforts to investigate the intelligence agencies in the 1970s, curb their abuses, and hold them accountable in the future. At the Center, he helped to write and edit two books, The CIA File and The Lawless State.


In 1979, Borosage became Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a research institute that drew its inspiration and fellowship from the major democratic movements of our time -- anti-war, women's, environmental and civil rights movements. Borosage helped to found and guide Countdown 88, which succeeded in winning the congressional ban on covert action against Nicaragua. Under Borosage's direction, the Institute expanded its fellowship, launched a successful publications program, and developed a new Washington School for congressional aides and public interest advocates.


In 1988, Borosage left the Institute to serve as senior issues advisor to the presidential campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. He traveled the country with Jackson, writing speeches, framing policy responses, and providing debate preparation and assistance. He went on to advise a range of progressive political campaigns, including those of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, Barbara Boxer and Paul Wellstone. "