Trump has been a racist for a long time, but he's finally picked a target that even the Republicans

[applegrove]

Why Trump’s Attack on Gonzalo Curiel Is the Final Straw

Trump has been a racist for a long time, but he's finally picked a target that even the Republicans feel sympathy for.

By Jeet Heer at the New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/134044/trumps-attack-gonzalo-curiel-final-straw

"SNIP.............


The Republican Party, which put up with Donald Trump’s racist, crackpot ravings throughout the primary campaign, is finally showing signs of resistance. Even those who have endorsed Trump, like Newt Gingrich, are now disassociating themselves from Trump’s line that Judge Gonzalo Curiel cannot be expected to be an impartial arbiter of the case against Trump University simply because of his Mexican ancestry. Paul Ryan, who officially endorsed Trump only days ago, said Trump’s remarks are “indefensible” and a “textbook case” of racism. Mitch McConnell urged Trump to drop the attacks against “various minority groups in the country” and “get on message.”

The question is: What took them so long? After all, the attack on Curiel is just the latest in an endless stream of racist comments Trump has made throughout his career, ranging from his calls to execute the Central Park Five (who were later exonerated), to his questioning of President Obama’s citizenship, to his references to Mexican “rapists,” to his promise to bar Muslims from entering the United States.

What makes the Curiel case so special that Republicans are acting as if Trump has finally crossed the line? The most likely explanation is that Curiel is a member of the governing elite, like Gingrich and Ryan, and in his capacity as a judge is part of the supposedly apolitical ruling class. Joseph McCarthy followed a similar trajectory: He destroyed the lives of countless Americans with his demagogic anti-communism, but only received bipartisan pushback when he went after the Army in 1954.

As Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall shrewdly noted on Twitter, Curiel is a specific individual with a biography, whereas the objects of Trump’s other attacks were mainly hypotheticals. Trump was promising to bar Muslims and deport undocumented immigrants, but the very fact that these measures would encompass millions of faceless people makes them hard to think about except in abstract terms.



..............SNIP"

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Judge Curiel is not a election target. He is a personal "enemy" in a court case. Trumps use of his

campaign to take down a personal enemy that has nothing to do with his campaign is what surprised me.

We have all talked about this elected or that who kept a personal enemies list. In real time, we see Trumps willingness to use campaign money and resources to attack someone who is his personal enemy.

Now, imagine what he will do with the full resources of the US government to his personal enemies.

The racism doesn't surprise me. Trump is open about expressing what others expressed with code words. It is his open corruption of power that I find surprising and worrying.

[applegrove]

2. Yes he has pulled down some of the GOP fictions.

[world wide wally]

3. when he takes down an entire race, we can only speak in generalities...

When he attacks an individual, we can speak in specifics

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. In this case, he did both.

His takedown of an individual is base on his skewed view of an entire race.