Off-Script, But Hardly Alone

Shorter Rick Moran: What Mo Brooks said was bad form, but it was kind of right:

I’m not sure the comment is “out there” at all. The exaggeration comes when trying to describe the Democrats’ identity politics: slice and dice the electorate into nice, neat little boxes and target them with ads and talking points demonizing Republicans for each group. Blacks are told the GOP wants to return to the days of Jim Crow. Hispanics, that Republicans want to deport them even if they’re legal. Single women, that the GOP wants to take away their birth control pills and make life miserable for them. Even if those specific charges aren’t used by Democrats, they are broadly hinted at....

Rep. Brooks is mostly correct in his analysis of the immigration issue...But he exaggerates when he says Democrats claim all whites hate everyone else....

The irony is that Brooks will be vilified for racially dividing America when it’s the Democrats whose deliberate political strategy of cleaving the electorate by skin color has done more to damage and divide America than anything this back bench Republican could ever do.

Of course Moran can't credibly repudiate Brooks. Brooks is just another Monster from the (Republican) Id, saying exactly what they all think but most know they aren't supposed to say. Republicans are like OJ, always searching for the real racists. And they always find them not in the de facto single-race party, but in the party that enjoys broad support across all racial and ethnic groups.

When your whole worldview is predicated on your own race/gender/orientation being the default, being normal, of course you end up thinking inclusiveness is divisiveness. And every now and then, like Mo Brooks, you end up saying it.