Trump, Tax Cuts and Terrorism Why do Republicans enable right-wing extremism? By Paul Krugman

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Last edited Mon Aug 5, 2019, 07:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Trump, Tax Cuts and Terrorism

Why do Republicans enable right-wing extremism?

By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist at the NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/opinion/republicans-white-terrorism.html

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So how do Republicans win elections? By appealing to racial animus. This is such an obvious fact of American political life that you have to be willfully blind not to see it.

For a long time, the G.O.P. establishment was able to keep this game under control. It would campaign using implicit appeals to racial hostility (welfare queens! Willie Horton!) but turn postelection to privatization and tax cuts.

But for some reason this bait-and-switch started getting less effective in the 2000s. Maybe it was the reality of America’s growing racial diversity; maybe it was the fact that American society as a whole was becoming less racist, leaving the hard-core racists feeling isolated and frustrated. And the election of our first black president really kicked hatred into overdrive.

The result is that there are more and more angry white people out there willing to commit mayhem — and able to do so because those same Republicans have blocked any effective control over sales of assault weapons.


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