I was with you until racists latch onto Republicans but that doesn’t make republicans racist. That’s literally a #notallmen defense. Many republican candidates openly embrace the racist vote so I’d say it’s pretty fair to criticize them as a whole for it. If racists didn’t have a party that aligned with their values they just wouldn’t vote. If racists are flocking to you in droves and that’s not the plan wouldn’t you ask yourself, “What am I doing to earn the support of people I find repugnant and what should I stop doing to prevent that?”
Just saw this.
It depends on the policy. A common example: If an R senator opposes "hand outs" (i.e. social security) because he thinks it's keeping poor people down by keeping them dependent on the gov't (a very popular belief among R's), and racists support the R's policy because they just don't want to give their money to brown people, then no, I think it would be strange for an R senator to suddenly support an opposite policy he thinks harms poor people just to stick it to the racists. I think asking yourself "What am I doing to earn the support of people I find repugnant" is a fair question that should be asked, but making losing their support Priority One--even at the expense of your own beliefs and doing what you believe makes the country worse off--is not reasonable.
I think there are a lot of reasons to believe racism is present in a lot of R's policies. I think it's important to ask what the costs of a policy are, and emboldening racists is one of those costs. When an R like Trump seems to demonstrate time and again through what he says and policies like the Muslim ban that he holds little value for brown people's lives, I thinks it's not only reasonable but essential to call him and his policies out on his racism. But I don't think it's reasonable to say R's are racist because racists also want some of the same policies. You don't craft policy to spite racists. You craft policy to effect change in the way you think will best help people.
It's basically the same thing I said to riotous: If an argument or policy seems to be flirting with racism on its merits, that's the reason to call it out as racist. Not because some racists have also embraced that argument or policy for what could be completely different reasons.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Don't get me started on trying to use an ironic hashtag to de-legitimize an argument
