The GOP weaponizing a tragic murder—while, among other things, rewarding dirty fossil fuel backers & sentencing 1400 ppl/year to death by eviscerating the clean power plan—is GOP politics in a nutshell: fan hate to distract & divide while picking pockets & endangering the public.
Democrats shouldn't shy away from nailing the GOP's racism. Instead, empirical message testing has found that it's an explosively powerful message to explain that the GOP deliberately fans racial anxiety to distract and divide while ripping people off.
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As research by @anatosaurus & @IanHaneyLopez has shown, talking about race and class *together*—as in, "We need elected leaders who will put the interests of working people first, whether we’re white, Black or brown"—outperforms simply talking about populist economics w/o race.
Careful research has found that the GOP *needs* dog-whistling for its message to resonate with its (white!) audience. As we've seen in special election after special election, Paul Ryan's economic message falls flat, so the GOP turns to racial fear.
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Dems who get nervous about naming the GOP's racist appeals, and simply try to change the subject, will do demonstrably worse than those who point out what the GOP is doing and explain why they're doing it.
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