Soon after taking office, President Obama told Republicans “elections have consequences.” One of the biggest consequences of this election is that calling someone racist, sexist, or xenophobic to try to shut them up no longer works.
The hysterical reaction to Trump’s selection of Breitbart Chairman Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counselor shows that the Left has not adjusted to this reality.
{mosads}Trump famously launched his campaign by accusing Mexico of sending rapists and drugs across the border. Republican and Democratic politicians demanded he apologize. Macys and Univision cut business ties with him. But he only strengthened his commitment to immigration enforcement.
First he worked with Senator Jeff Sessions to craft a rock solid immigration plan. Then he called for temporarily restricting Muslim immigration. He put immigration front and center of his convention speech. After rumors of waffling, he gave a widely televised speech in Arizona reaffirming his absolute opposition to amnesty and support for immigration control.
All of these actions led to more outrage and more demands for apologies, but he never backed down. When he hired Steve Bannon as his campaign CEO in August, the Washington Post noted the pick amplified Trump’s “nationalist message and reinforced his populist impulses.”
Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said this would lead Trump to “double down” on his rhetoric adding that Breitbart was a “divisive, at times racist, anti-Muslim conspiracy news site.”
Nine days after his appointment, Clinton herself gave a speech attacking Bannon as a hire who will “let Trump be Trump” she quoted the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attacks on Breitbart, read off some provocative headlines from the site, and tried to tie Bannon, Breitbart, and Trump to the “alt right” movement.
Clinton previously dealt with Republicans who responded to these attacks by capitulating and equivocating. Trump and Bannon refused to play by the Democrat’s rules. Everyone dismissed Bannon’s populist strategy as nothing more than an attempt to lay the framework for a TV network after Trump’s inevitable loss.
The media ran story after story showering attention on any extremist they could find who would say he supported Trump. Clinton called Trump a racist during the debates and said that half of his supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic.” Clinton hoped these attacks would energize her base while peeling off swing voters.
This strategy failed miserably. Americans knew very well what Trump’s position on immigration was. The media and Clinton campaign had repeated all of his most controversial statements verbatim over and over again.
They heard all the the various ‘ist’ and ‘phobic’ suffixes carelessly hurled at Trump and his supporters. And they still elected him president. Clinton wrote off the white working class which flocked to Trump, and he won a greater percentage black and Hispanic voters than Mitt Romney.
Rather than reexamine this strategy, the Left is repeating the same attacks they used on Trump on Steve Bannon — even using the exact same Southern Poverty Law Center quotes and Breitbart Headlines that Clinton tried to scare off voters with in August.
Harry Reid demanded that Trump fire Bannon because it puts a “champion of racial division a step away from the Oval Office.” But Reid called Trump himself a racist prior to the election.
The New York Times editorialized that “Many if not most Americans had never heard of Mr. Bannon before this weekend” suggesting that Trump engaged in a bait and switch. Yet putting aside the fact that Clinton tried and failed to make Bannon a campaign issue, everything that they say about Bannon has been said about Trump ad nauseum.
Steve Bannon has strong views on trade, immigration, and law and order. Donald Trump expressed these same views on the campaign trail. Breitbart sometimes uses bombastic language to get its point across.
Needless to say, so does Donald Trump. Bannon’s ex-wife said unpleasant things about him in their divorce proceedings. Such is often the case in divorce situations.
If Americans didn’t want Bannon advising the President, they would have elected Hillary Clinton. No one denies he is an accomplished, intelligent, and capable man.
Born to a working class family in Virginia he became a military officer before excelling on Wall Street, Hollywood, and now politics.
Donald Trump deserves the opportunity to implement the policies on which he campaigned. Steve Bannon deserves the opportunity to help him.
Virgil Goode, Jr. (R) represented Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District from 1997-2009.