If Donald Trump were black, would the GOP base accept him? The answer is obvious.Obviously, judging from the last two decades of Republican crushes on the rare black Republicans — J.C. Watts, Colin Powell, Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, Tim Scott, Michael Steele, Ben Carson, etc. — the answer is:
Of course.
As the old joke goes, what do you call the one black man at a conservative conference: “Keynote Speaker.”
(Remember, for example, when the GOP airlifted Marylander Alan Keyes into the 2004 Senate race in Illinois to run against Barack Obama?
Kirchick doesn’t.)
But not in Kirchick’s Alternative Universe where “Donnell Trump” is a black billionaire hotel magnate running for the GOP nomination on “nationalist, politically incorrect, anti-immigrant populism.” In Kirchick World:
My point is that the very voters and media personalities who would almost certainly condemn Donell have embraced Donald, which indicates the degree to which a racial double standard exists at the core of the Republican Party and conservative media world.The more interesting question is whether the mainstream media world would have gone quite so nuclear against a Black Trump.
