The G.O.P. at a Crossroads

by Ross Douthat

Dec. 17, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/opinion/campaign-stops/the-gop-at-a-crossroads.html?comments&_r=0#permid=16980156

Ever since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" (where white resentment against the Civil Rights legislation by Democrats was used by Republicans), Republicans have, sometimes successfully, used fear mongering to try and gain votes, that is, to accentuate the distrust and fears between various groups inside the US and towards countries and societies outside the US, inciting and fanning these irrational fears and ruthlessly using them to try and gain votes. This strategy is especially successful with the less educated, poor and disenfranchised whites.

The current campaign is the logical conclusion of this long-standing GOP strategy, still successful at the local and state level, due to jerrymangering and demography, but increasingly a dead-end strategy at the national level.

When I listened to Tuesday's debate, it was dominated by irrational fear-mongering (immigration and ISIS in this case) - there are more Americans killed on a daily basis in the US than by ISIS in a whole year. So the frenetic fear mongering of virtually all candidates is completely fact-free, parallel universe. If these candidates truly were concerned about keeping the homeland safe, they woul worry much more about domestic gun ownership that threading to "carpet bomb ISIS" and "kill the families of terrorists".