How Long Can Real Conservatives Make Excuses for Trump?
Republicans who made the so-called transactional case for Trump didn’t anticipate the full cost.
Not helping calm things down.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
During each week of the Donald Trump presidency, but especially the last few, liberals and conservatives have been splitting further apart on race. This polarization is based on differences that precede Trump – but also on the nature of the bargain many conservatives have made with him.
Nearly everyone agrees that racism is evil. But liberals and conservatives have different thresholds for what constitutes it. So liberals think that conservatives are insensitive to it at best, or actually bigoted at worst. Conservatives think liberals are oversensitive to it at best, or cynically exploiting the charge at worst. And this difference in perception is self-reinforcing, as each new racial controversy appears to confirm each side’s assumptions about the other.