Tony Quinn, a Republican political analyst in California, has concluded that Donald Trump’s supporters are racists. “Trump well understood how to dog whistle the race card,” he writes at foxandhoundsdaily.
The term “dog whistle” is a frequent leftist argument, which claims that Republicans use racist code words that the rest of America does not notice or understand understand to reach racist voters.
Quinn asserts:
… the Republican electorate is overwhelmingly white and elderly. In 2009, Republicans were mystified that an African American with a funny name took over the country. Then their worst fears were realized when his appointees and his policies seemed to many to favor non-whites over white people; and in these seven years deep white resentment has built up.
Noting Trump’s characterization of illegal Mexican immigrants as rapists and robbers, Quinn continues,
There is a fear among older whites that the huge numbers of Latinos in this country are somehow a threat to the American culture. Trump’s call to deport 11 million of them found a receptive audience. Then his denunciation of Muslims reinforced it; he will get rid of the Mexicans and keep the Muslims out.
Quinn notes that Trump’s protectionist rhetoric does not target “white Europeans.”
He adds:
Republicans also know they have lost the so-called cultural wars; gay marriage, floods of illegal immigrants, and now soon every restroom in American will be transgender. And they are mad, and they want a champion to fight back for them. So along came Donald Trump with an appeal to every one of their prejudices.