“These are challenging times in the United States of America. We have a hater in the White House: the birther in chief, the grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
— Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), quoted by the HuffPost, referencing the leader of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R) named as one of his committee chairs a state representative who opposed the erection of a statue to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the grounds of the State Capitol and said the Ku Klux Klan made “people straighten up,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Rep. Tommy Benton (R) will chair the House Retirement Committee, which oversees the retirement funds for Georgia teachers and state employees.
Politico: “Everyone knew Steve King’s history of racist rhetoric. It had gone on for more than a decade. But House Republicans did something about it this week, as Democrats moved to denounce King on the House floor. After years of tolerating King’s offensive remarks on race, minority groups and immigrants, House GOP leaders reached their breaking point — a New York Times interview in which the Iowa Republican defended white nationalism and white supremacy.”
“While the King drama played out over the past few days, some Republicans seized on the incident to reorient the party’s position — and maybe more importantly, its language — on race. Yet with President Donald Trump regularly stoking racial division from the Oval Office, it’s not clear the action against King will amount to anything meaningful for the GOP.”
NBC News’ standards department sent an email to staffers Tuesday telling them not to directly refer to Rep. Steve King’s recent comments about white supremacy as “racist,” the HuffPost reports.
From the email: “Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist. It is ok to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”
“President Trump professed ignorance Monday about recent remarks from Rep. Steve King regarding white supremacy, while the storm around the Iowa Republican’s inflammatory comments continued to grow and senior GOP officials moved to strip him of valuable committee assignments,” the Washington Post reports.
“Yet Trump had no qualms about engaging in racially offensive comments of his own over the weekend…”
“The fresh controversies underscored the GOP’s ongoing struggles over the issue of race, even as condemnations from senior Republicans of King’s remarks grew louder on Monday and lawmakers argued that his voice didn’t represent the party.”
Michael Gerson: “In their criticism of Rep. Steve King, you get the sense that Republicans are actually relieved to be in the position of attacking racism for a change, instead of being forced to defend it from the president. They seem to be signaling that they are not really the bigots they appear to be. Republicans seem desperate to explain that they are normal and moral — despite all the evidence. Attacking King reveals some sense of shame at what they have become.”
“Yet, in the end, Republican critics of King manage to look worse rather than better. If racism is the problem, then President Trump is a worse offender. And the GOP’s relative silence on Trump is a sign of hypocrisy and weakness.”
“By any standard, Trump says things that are reckless, wrong, abhorrent, offensive and racist. Until Republicans can state this reality with the same clarity and intensity that they now criticize King, they will be cowards in a time crying for bravery.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) did not deny making inflammatory comments about white nationalism and white supremacy — though he insisted in an interview with NBC News that he rejects both of those mindsets.
Said King: “I reject white nationalism. I reject white supremacy. It’s not part of any of my ideology. I reject anyone who carries that ideology.”
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
— Rep. Steve King (R-IA), quoted by the New York Times.
New York Times: “The first votes of the Democratic presidential primary remain more than a year away, but black voters are keenly aware of the prominent role they will play in choosing the next nominee. In 2016, Mr. Sanders’s ‘political revolution’ flamed out with black voters, and Hillary Clinton fell short of the robust black turnout she needed to defeat Donald Trump.”
“This time around, Democrats are weighing how to reach out to the black community in the primary without losing the ability to appeal to the suburban and working class whites who propelled Mr. Trump to victory. As the party searches for a candidate who can combine those messages — from a field likely to include several racial minorities — many black voters want to be engaged in a manner that reflects their electoral power, and not passed over in favor of a strategy that prioritizes Mr. Trump’s heavily white coalition.”
Washington Post: “Five years after the GOP produced a self-examination that called for reconciliation with minority voters, the party has grown increasingly tolerant of racially divisive politics, making its support base even whiter as potential minority voters and candidates are driven away.”
“The approach has provided a measure of success where, in multiple races this year, black Democrats mobilized unusually high turnouts only to be defeated by white opponents who did the same among white voters. It has produced two vastly different American electorates that both parties are struggling to grapple with ahead of the 2020 presidential election.”
“While some have expressed concern that the party is becoming racially desensitized in a way that produces short-term gains but risks long-term peril, there is little evidence of institutional worry. Those most concerned about the direction of the party are out of office, out of favor — or, when it comes to matters of race, just outliers.”
“Republicans hoped to spend the final days of the special election in Mississippi coronating Cindy Hyde-Smith as the first woman to represent the state in the Senate. Instead, the race has become a bare-knuckle brawl infused with ugly racial politics,” Politico reports.
“Hyde-Smith’s comments about attending a public hanging and suppressing liberal votes — remarks she maintained were made in jest — have upended a contest that a week ago was seen as a mere formality for the GOP.”
New York Times: “Facing an uproar in a state divided by race and deeply scarred by a history of lynchings carried out against African-Americans, Ms. Hyde-Smith has since retreated from the campaign trail, ducking reporters’ questions and declining to apologize.”
Monkey Cage: “This year, Americans appear to have elected a record 53 African Americans to the House — assuming that Republicans William Hurd of Texas and Mia Love of Utah will win their tight races, which haven’t been called as of this writing. Hurd and Love would be the only two black Republicans in this wave; the 51 others are Democrats. Forty-four were reelected. Of those, four-fifths won reelection from majority-minority districts — defined here as districts where non-Hispanic whites form a minority of the voting-age population according to the 2010 Census. That’s what we’ve seen in the past: Historically, black representatives have been elected from majority-minority districts.”
“But here’s the big news: Eight of the nine newly elected African Americans won in districts dominated by non-Hispanic whites.”
A Kansas county commissioner referred to the “master race” as he addressed a black city planner presenting a land use analysis to county officials at a board meeting, the Kansas City Times reports.
Said Commissioner Louis Klemp: “I don’t want you to think I’m picking on you, because, we’re part of the master race.”
As he brought his fingers to his own teeth, he added: “You know you got a gap in your teeth, you’re the masters, don’t ever forget that.”
“Hate crimes in America rose 17% last year, the third consecutive year that such crimes increased, according to newly released FBI data that showed an even larger increase in anti-Semitic attacks,” the Washington Post reports.
“The sharp increase in hate crimes in 2017 came even as overall violent crime in America fell slightly, by 0.2%, after increases in 2015 and 2016.”
Washington Post: “By running so overtly on racially tinged messages, the GOP is putting that explosive form of politics on the ballot. If Republicans maintain control of the House, the notion of running a campaign built on blunt, race-based attacks on immigrants and minorities will have been validated. A loss, on the other hand, might prompt a number of Republicans to call for a rethinking of the party’s direction — but that would collide with a sitting president who, if anything, relishes over-the-edge rhetoric.”
Max Boot: “President Trump’s more sophisticated supporters in places such as Washington and New York claim that his presidency is a raging success because he has appointed conservative judges, cut taxes and turbocharged the economy. Trump himself evidently disagrees, because he is not running the midterm campaign based on his supposed achievements. Instead, Trump and his fellow Republicans are closing the election with the most naked appeal to racial prejudice since the dark days of Jim Crow when Democrats in the South would compete to display their fervor for segregation…”
“It is not shocking that Trump would stoop so low. With him, there is no bottom. What is shocking, if no longer entirely surprising, is that the Republican Party would so readily follow him into the gutter. The prominent Republicans denouncing his hate-mongering are mostly those such as Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ.), Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Gov. John Kasich (R) who are not seeking reelection. The rest of the GOP is complicit in this disgraceful demagoguery. Republicans who do not denounce Trump’s racist tactics — and even imitate them — will never escape the stench of this year’s campaign as long as they live.”
“President Trump, joined by many Republican candidates, is dramatically escalating his efforts to take advantage of racial divisions and cultural fears in the final days of the midterm campaign, part of an overt attempt to rally white supporters to the polls and preserve the GOP’s congressional majorities,” the Washington Post reports.
“On Thursday, Trump ratcheted up the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been the centerpiece of his midterm push by portraying a slow-moving migrant caravan, consisting mostly of families traveling on foot through Mexico, as a dangerous ‘invasion’ and suggesting that if any migrants throw rocks they could be shot by the troops that he has deployed at the border. The president also vowed to take action next week to construct ‘massive tent cities’ aimed at holding migrants indefinitely and making it more difficult for them to remain in the country.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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