Sohn: Donald Trump is exposing the GOP's underbelly

Donald Trump, a Republican presidential hopeful, speaks at a campaign rally at the International Air Response hangar in Mesa, Ariz., Dec. 16, 2015. (Caitlin O'Hara/The New York Times)
Donald Trump, a Republican presidential hopeful, speaks at a campaign rally at the International Air Response hangar in Mesa, Ariz., Dec. 16, 2015. (Caitlin O'Hara/The New York Times)

Republican politicians have long used a political code-word playbook, and many of the code words involved the poor, women and minorities - especially racial minorities.

Mitt Romney liked to talk about the "entitlement society." Newt Gingrich used the "food stamp president."

"Lawless" and "thug" were favored insults directed at President Barack Obama by right-wing radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and others. "Thug" was also used to describe Trayvon Martin and outspoken Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. It was Sherman who noted that "thug" seemed to have become an "accepted way of calling somebody the N-word."

Ian Haney Lpez, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in his book published last year, "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class," outlined how politicians and plutocrats attract white votes by deploying veiled racial messages that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of the message.

But that was last year. That was pre-Trump. That was before the GOP front-runner began to the use his own dog-whistle term: "not politically correct" to catapult himself into the headlines of free advertising over and over and over again.

That was before "illegal aliens" became "Mexican rapists," and before the Donald said he hated the mainstream media but wouldn't kill (well, maybe) reporters. That was before he introduced our children to an untoward sexual term to describe Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2012 presidential election and before he labeled women in the bathroom "disgusting."

Just when you think Trump can't get any more vile or hateful, he does.

And we almost have to pity the GOP: In taking Republicans' playbook and code words for stifling minority votes, stripping women's rights and disrespecting ordinary working Americans out of the "political correctness" box, he has completely exposed the party's dark and empty soul.

Trump, standing on the platform of hate, fear and insecurity Republicans have been erecting for years, has called out the GOP's "political correctness" and given it the party's real and coarse voice.

Upcoming Events