Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Gehenna: : The Republican Party Got the Voters It Deserved: "Megan McArdle thinks people are exaggerating the Republican Party's responsibility for Donald Trump...
...'like blaming the weatherman because it’s raining, or an economist for a recession.’... Republicans had encouraged, or at least tolerated, schoolyard taunts and far-fetched conspiracy talk long before Trump's campaign... accusing the president of not being a U.S citizen [is] a slur that had been bandied about by many highly visible Republicans.... [Trump is] now recycling conspiracy theories from 20 years ago about Hillary Clinton... promoted at the time by talk-show hosts and Republican[s].... By giving a megaphone to people like Pat Robertson, Herman Cain, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, Republicans showed their voters... [that] a 'normal' Republican presidential candidate... isn't all that different from Donald Trump. Republican voters... had been taught by their party to ignore normal qualifications, and they did so. That same observation can be made about how Republicans have tolerated and promoted bigotry.... McArdle is wrong to say that the Republicans' ‘Southern strategy’... was only incidentally pitched to bigots.... Nixon was clearly and deliberately going after pro-segregation voters... a strategy continued (for example) by Lee Atwater... George H.W. Bush....
McArdle... says: ‘You don’t put ideas in peoples’ heads; they just grow there.’ But voters have all sorts of ideas.... Most of those ideas... are relatively loosely held.... Only when politicians highlight those ideas do they escape from peoples' heads and become political issues.... There are many potential audiences in the electorate. Politicians and political parties choose which ones to nurture--and are fairly held responsible for those choices.
