Trump’s Latest Tussle With Tavis Smiley Confirms the Uncomfortable Truth About His Success

‘I am William Johnson, a farmer and a white nationalist. Support Donald Trump. I paid for this through the super PAC. [Telephone] (213) 718-3908. This call is not authorized by Donald Trump.’”

This comes as the mainstream media treat the businessman and reality show host-turned-politician like a celebrity, with invitations to appear on news programs and the late-night talk-show circuit. Donald Trump means ratings, and the media, at first reacting to him as a curiosity and a form of entertainment, appears to take him seriously. And at the current trajectory, he is poised to become the GOP nominee for president.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party establishment—having failed with Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and their other empty-suit, milquetoast, corporate-shill spokespeople—shake their heads in confusion, asking what they must do to derail the Trump train. Well, the answer is staring them in the face, but they won’t like it, because it would force them to re-examine and reject the “Southern Strategy” that has handed them electoral victories for 40 years. And as we know, horrible habits are not easily shed.

After all, the Republican Party has pursued a policy of attracting angry white folks for years, harvesting their racial resentment over Black people and the gains of the civil rights movement, and channeling that negative energy into hatred of taxes and government programs. This is how the GOP won over the South from the Democrats. The only difference was that Republicans tended to seal the deal through racially coded language and “dog-whistle” politics. Then came the ascent of the Tea Party and Birther movements, the further exodus of party moderates, and the more explicit targeting of the “other” in the form of Obama, depicting him as their foreign, Muslim, Kenyan-born boogeyman of an enemy. Trump is even more blatant and confrontational through an unfiltered, direct appeal to poor, uneducated whites and an express campaign of white-skin solidarity and racial nationalism.

Trump accomplishes the GOP endgame, but with a slight variation on the methods. Winks and nods to racism now become the outright targeting of Black and Brown people and calls for their marginalization and expulsion. And yet, for the Republican Party elders to call the candidate out on his racism is like the hood calling the sheets white.