Seeing a number of tweets like this tonight. What it looks like: people still on staff in the Trump White House made their peace with this kind of thing long ago. Either they share Trump's resentful, fearful racism, or they've made up their minds not to think about it. 1/n
2. What about Republican elected officials? A couple of Florida representatives, and one from Utah (of Haitian extraction) have expressed their dismay, as has one Minnesota Congressman (@RepErikPaulsen ). Orrin Hatch has asked for an explanation from Trump, whatever that means.
3. Just as the press reports of Trump's repellent comments about non-white immigrants were coming out this afternoon, @JohnKasich and @JebBush circulated their @nytimes Op-Ed ripping Trump's decision to expel Salvadorans in the country since 2001. So credit to them as well.
4. Otherwise, it's the usual silence: elected Republicans acting as subordinates of Trump, & waiting for a cue from him as to what they should say. They include Republicans from Republican states, and from swing states, who have made careers in Congress, and who just arrived.
5. For Republicans thinking of a long career in their future, this behavior is nuts. It's true Trump has devoted followers among rank-and-file Republican voters; he is their Leader, so he decides what they think. But he's a sinking ship.
6. This is not a close call. Trump's approvals are not going back up; he's lost in every important policy area; his faculties are declining. Tie yourself to Trump now, and you're known for it the rest of your life in politics.
7. I suspect the smarter elected Republicans in Washington have figured this out. It would explain the recent wave of retirement announcements. I suspect further the Republicans who aren't leaving are most scared of their donor constituency.
8. Large Republican donors are devoted to Trump, as well they might be after enactment of a tax cut bill aimed mostly at cutting their own taxes. GOP elected officials are, in turn, devoted to their largest donors, regarding them with respect bordering on reverence.
9. So Trump's expression today of overt, deeply felt racism -- virtually a declaration that he and his party do not want non-white votes -- needs to trouble large donors before Republican elected officials will say anything. It doesn't, so they don't.
10. But you can't build a political future if a handful of large, wealthy donors is your primary constituency. In America we have experience with this. Serve the wealthy quietly & while doing other things and you're fine; serve only your donors and you'll be toast eventually.
11. The Republican Party has, since the early 1990s, built itself on a foundation of winning low-turnout elections, the ones in which older, richer, whiter voters go to the polls and younger, poorer, and minority voters don't. That won't work in the future...
12...beginning this year, when Trump has only begun to antagonize Americans likely to vote Democratic if they vote at all. There's a lot more to be said about this, and about all the things Republicans in politics have left behind in order to show their loyalty to Trump.
13. For now, note only this: silence is a statement. If Trump says as head of the GOP that he doesn't want non-white immigrants, Republicans who avert their eyes while saying nothing may as well be cheering him on. They are defining what their party will be known for. [end]
