Former Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin is warning the Republican party, and the message is loud and clear: The GOP has a known history of racist supporters, and it is something that needs to be addressed by Republican leadership.
In a barrage of tweets, McMullin threw it all out there.
“When 92% of black voters don’t support the Republican nominee, but the KKK does, there’s a problem. Let’s deal with it and move forward.”
“I don’t believe racism is anyone’s true core, but we have a problem & need leaders to call it out & eradicate it. Our future depends on it.”
“Racism like @CarlPaladino’s and that of others in the GOP won’t just go away on its own. It’s a problem that requires better leadership.”
McMullin was a former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, and served as a CIA operations officer. Worried that the election of Trump would be a threat to the nation, he gathered support from the “Never Trump” movement and took to the campaign trail. Based out of Utah, McMullin decided to run as an Independent, conservative alternative to Donald Trump. As a relatively young and unknown candidate, he was only able to muster around 1% of the vote nationally, but finished strong in his state of Utah at 21%.
Whether Republicans would like to admit it or not, there is certainly an issue with racism within the GOP. On Friday, Carl Paladino, co-chair to Donald Trump’s New York presidential campaign, was asked what he would like to see in 2017. His hopes included some obscene comments on the current First Lady, Michelle Obama:
“I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe, where she lives comfortable in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”
It doesn’t get much more racist than that, folks. Paladino issued an apology in a statement on WBEN radio in upstate New York, insisting that he is “certainly not a racist.” He went on to express his regret for his comments by adding: “What is horrible is explaining to my 17 year old daughter how her hero could be so stupid.” Her hero just called the First Lady a male gorilla, Carl. I’m not sure how something like that is merely a slip of the tongue.
As if the narrative was written for a bad network sitcom, former KKK leader David Duke responded to McMullin’s comments and tweeted:
“#AntiWhite traitors like McMullin won’t just go away on their own.”
McMullin fired back in a cheeky manner, using a famous line from the Declaration of Independence.
“@DrDavidDuke We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator...”
For those who aren’t aware, David Duke is a former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a white nationalist, a denier of the holocaust, and even once served as a Republican Lousiana State Representative!
Every American knows that the “good ‘ol boy” attitude of Southerners, combined with the upper-class WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) crowd will support at least some mild form of racism. This is something that most people have come to accept, whether or not it is spoken about in public. In June, Paul Ryan, current GOP Speaker of the House, actually admitted (via Fox News) that the Republican Party supported a racist candidate in order to win the election. He admitted that although Donald Trump made racist comments, he would rather have a person who would pass his policies than Hillary Clinton.
“I disavow those remarks. I regret those comments that he made. Claiming a person can’t do the job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. I think that’s absolutely unacceptable. But do I believe that Hillary Clinton is the answer? No, I do not. Do I believe that Hillary Clinton is going to be the answer to solving these problems? I do not. I believe that we have more common ground on the policy issues of the day and we have more likelihood of getting our policies enacted with him than with her.”
That was a pretty long-winded and podium-like way to say that “we know Trump is a racist, but fuck Hillary Clinton.” Magically enough, it worked!
During the 2012 Republican Convention, Senator Lindsay Graham (R., SC) knew that while the GOP didn’t have the support of minorities in the nation, they would at least have to have white men on their side to stand a chance in the presidential races to come.
“The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term,” said Graham. He was correct in his comments, as Barack Obama was able to beat Mitt Romney in 2012 and secure a second presidential term. That didn’t work for the Democrats in 2016, as we know. While Obama was able to garner enough support from the white population to serve a couple of terms as Commander in Chief, Hillary Clinton simply wasn’t well liked. She had no personality, and Trump was able to rally enough white people for a victory.
America does have a problem with race, whether we like to admit it or not. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that it is as simple as “dealing with it and moving forward,” as McMullin proposed. The experiment that is the United States of America is unlike any tried in human history. Our population is comprised of virtually every nationality on the planet, and we’re told to live harmoniously. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have a non-homogeneous society comprised of 320 million people that experience true equality for all. On top of that, the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech, so if one group openly states that they hate another, it is all perfectly fine and dandy. People are free to choose where they live, and who they associate with – so if whites segregate themselves from the black population or other minorities, it is perfectly legal.
There are no easy solutions. In the end, a society that is not culturally homogeneous and free to say and do as they please will always experience racial divides. The scariest thing of all is that supporters of true racist ideologies within the United States are beginning to win elections, and be placed in great positions of leadership. To stop this transition of power, the people that vote for these leaders will have to be taught that multiculturalism is a good thing, and blunt racism is bad – and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
