This isn’t a joke???
REALLY?
I mean Trump & Co. trying to keep the media focused on protest violence and dragging some black folks out in front camera’s at the convention is supposed to get Donald Trump ‘moderate’ wobbly Republican voters?
REALLY?
As part of this strategy, Republicans and the Trump campaign are attempting to focus voters’ minds away from the pandemic and economic crisis and on a narrower set of cultural issues. For example, the nation is in dire straits, they say, not because of Covid-19 deaths or double-digit unemployment or racial discord, but because of liberals who want to “cancel” conservatives, criminals who are rampaging from the cities into white suburbs and a Democratic presidential ticket that is a “Trojan horse” for Fidel Castro-style authoritarianism.
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To complement the drumbeat of panic about the radical left, convention speakers stressed their personal experiences with the president and shared affirmations about his character — a man of “deep compassion” and “endless kindness” with an “exceptional work ethic,” they said. And they attempted to refute the idea that he dislikes Black people, women and immigrants, calling those divisive characterizations by the left and distortions of a media “fog machine.” Ben Carson, the only Black member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, said people who called the president racist “could not be more wrong.”
Strategists in both parties say this attempt to reframe the country’s understanding of who the president is could backfire, coming off as dismissive of the acute racial awareness that has been leading people of all political beliefs and races to re-examine their attitudes about discrimination.
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“It is a fascinating tightrope they’re walking on because on the one hand Trump is saying some of the most racist, bombastic stuff ever to come out of the mouth of a nominee of a major political party,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns, when racial attitudes were never far from the surface. “At the same time, they are professing and having others validate that he is not a racist. The contradiction is mind boggling.”
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Inside Republican campaigns across the country, operatives are intent on reaching a relatively small slice of the electorate: Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who have either not voted or voted for Democrats since Mr. Trump took office because they dislike his style and leadership. The goal between now and the election is to make these more moderate voters feel comfortable again being associated with a party they think has lurched far to the right, unapologetically condoning and courting racists, bigots and other extremists….