Trump Blows Up Received Political Wisdom: But political roadblocks may be ahead, by Bruce Thornton.
Donald Trump’s improbable victory on June 8 exploded much of the received political wisdom, especially political correctness, that many Republicans had considered an immutable inhibitor of policy reform. Now we will see if the deeper structural changes of the past decades created by political correctness can be corrected.
Establishment Republicans had become the B team of political correctness. (The Democrats were of course the A team.)
As the rhetoric of the NeverTrumpers revealed, identity politics ideology about various subgroups in America had been accepted as truth. Many so-called conservatives endorsed dubious victim-narratives and group identities as realities that Republicans had to accept and adapt to. “Hispanics,” we were told, are the fastest growing minority, a demographic time-bomb that will shatter the Republican party unless it acknowledged their grievances and proposed remedies. Rhetoric criticizing illegal aliens was counterproductive and “insensitive,” if not racist. …
The first problem is that “Hispanics” don’t exist. In reality there is a complex diversity of peoples from various ethnicities and national cultures. …
More important, this Republican dogma ignored the concerns of millions of ordinary Republican voters who worried about a porous border, increased crime, cheap labor undercutting wages, the fiscal strain on public services and state budgets, and the disorder caused by bringing into their communities peoples with radically different mores and cultural practices. And these ordinary Americans resented the accusations leveled by some Republican pundits and politicians that such concerns reflected nativism, xenophobia, or even racism. …
This Republican establishment obeisance to progressive politically correct shibboleths had long angered millions of Republicans. It became particularly egregious in 2008 and 2012, when fear of appearing “racist” inhibited John McCain and Mitt Romney from vigorously attacking and exposing Barack Obama’s hard-left ideology, sinister friends and associates, bogus biography, and divisive race-baiting. …
So now what?
The political correctness so many nominal conservatives observe has burrowed deep into our culture and educational system, not just in curricula but in administrative offices and practices. It permeates federal laws like Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which puts the coercive power of the state behind the various speech codes that enforce censorship and punish offenders.
We are now in the third generation of students who have been marinated in this ideology from kindergarten to university. Like the vicious rhetoric used to attack Trump’s policy proscriptions on immigration, this political correctness will inhibit politicians and make it more difficult to reform immigration, step-up deportations, and increase border protections.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
