Why there's nothing hypocritical about the GOP's defense of both Trump and 'law and order'

[Nevilledog]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/trump-gop-law-and-order-18152219.php

No paywall
https://archive.is/t1ewN

Ever since alleged serial tax and campaign funding cheat, justice obstructor and sexual batterer Donald Trump rose to political prominence in 2015, a common rhetorical theme among centrist and liberal pundits has been the seeming inconsistency in the Republican party’s embrace of both “law and order” and a leader who consistently — often openly and admittedly — engages in law-breaking.

Many of the pundits making this point over the years have had their hearts in the right place. But not only has their argument proved entirely unpersuasive in shaming its intended targets into corrective action, it has actually helped carry water for the Republican brand by assuming a good faith that has never been present.

That’s because the GOP’s “law and order” rhetoric has never actually meant law and order in the crime and punishment sense of the phrase. From its inception, the term has been a racist dog whistle — a post-Jim Crow, ostensibly race-neutral appeal to send a signal of criminalizing Black and brown people under the auspices of “fighting crime.”

Then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon infamously popularized the phrase in his 1968 campaign to fend off attacks from his right by arch-segregationist George Wallace. From its inception, it signaled opposition to the civil rights movement, something not lost on its target audience, as Time magazine noted at the time.

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