ERICK ERICKSON COMPARES A BROKERED CONVENTION TO JIM CROW

Erick Erickson isn't even a Donald Trump supporter, but he opposes the GOP establishment strategy of keeping multiple Trump challengers in the race and backing them all in their strongest states in order to prevent Trump from reaching the convention with a majority of delegates.

To Erickson, this is oppressive bigotry:

If the GOP plays for keeps on this, they’ll keep a party no serious person would support in the system because the signal they’ll be sending is that the party is exclusive.

Trump, though I do not like him, has brought swarms of people into the GOP. Putting out a “No Trump voters allowed” sign is Jim Crowing the GOP -- a convention equivalent to segregated water fountains and delegates.

Look, I think Republican establishmentarians are going to get their butts kicked by (many of) the party's own voters if they go through with this plan. Also, I can't believe the establishmentarians will be able to agree on someone by convention time. They dithered last year instead of settling on a preferred candidate, and even with the doomsday clock winding down, they still can't pick a favorite.

But, Erick, this is not Jim Crow. This is not a dominant group denying basic human rights to a dominated group in every area of public life, with the denials enforced by the very real threat of brutal mob violence. No one's being lynched. No one (at least in the Republican primaries) is even being denied the right to vote.

This isn't even like the Democrats' refusal to seat the integrated but mostly black delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964. The black Mississippians represented by the MFDP were still being denied the right to register to vote; it sure seems to me that Trump voters are being allowed to vote, and to select delegates who can go to the convention and vote. I think outflanking the Trumpites at the convention will enrage them, but if it happens, it'll be because they're being outvoted. Fair and square.

But in Erickson's post we see two common conservative themes. One is that it's unfair for conservatives to lose, ever, even if the other side has more support. But we're right! they insist. Therefore, we should win! They have more voters, but we have more of the right kind of voters! Um, no. It doesn't work that way.

The other is that it's really unfair for groups other than white Christians to be able to invoke what's been done to them in the past. Why do they get the moral high ground just because they were brutalized? We want some moral high ground, too! We're jealous! White conservatives are obsessed with seizing other people's moral high ground. Abortion is "second Holocaust." Gay marriage is sending Christians to "the back of the bus."

To some extent, Erickson is trolling us with this. To some extent, he's sincere. Conservatives want to be the victims. Erickson even wants conservatives he doesn't like to be the victims. Victimization is strength.