I'm sure by now you're tired of reading articles about Donald Trump and his win to become President-elect. I know. I'm tired of it, too. But no matter how tired I am of them, my fingers would just not hold off on writing this particular article. So here it goes, people. Enjoy yet another article about Donald Trump and how the GOP used him to "finesse" America.
PS: If you are one of those "well not all republicans!" or "not all white people!" type of people, please understand that I do not mean to generalize, but there's an issue that cannot be ignored any longer. So enjoy this and attempt to understand where I'm coming from.
Fasten your seatbelts! Here we go!
From day one of his campaign, Donald Trump promised to be anti-establishment. He ran on the promise to take down Washington insiders and boost the lower class (white) people in order to "make America great again." This excited a majority of the Republican base because, as we all have come to know, making America great again means making America even more overtly racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic again. No more women being outspoken in government. No more LGBTQIA people being able to live life how they want. And, surely, no more people of color walking around freely and without fear. For the majority of Americans, this sounded like a great idea whether they believed these things directly or not. All they had to do was vote for a candidate who did.
What I'm about to suggest will be radical, but who am I kidding. Everything I write is at least a little radical. For me, I strongly believe that Donald Trump was the Republican establishment's way of securing the presidential and congressional elections. By allowing Donald Trump to lead the Republican party, not only did Washington insiders, who Donald promised to defeat, get a Republican president, but they got a Senate majority, a House majority, and the potential to have a Supreme Court majority. Sure. Donald Trump is a problem, but he's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is establishment Republicans in general.
Remember when Donald Trump called for a ban of Muslims who come to America? Yeah... Remember when establishment Republicans took way too long to denounce that? My theory is that Republican insiders knew what Donald was saying was wrong, but they refused to denounce it because they knew their base was excited by this. From that moment, it became clear that Donald Trump would be the key to everything their mouths had been foaming over for the last eight years. I imagined Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus, and Mitch McConnell looked something much like this...
To me, I don't think it was about the fact Donald Trump was exciting people to engage in racist, hateful, and, at times, violent acts for Mitch, Reince, and Ryan. To them, it was all abut the conservative measures they could push through easily and with little opposition. With Capital Hill, the White House, and Judiciary Square belonging to one party, it would take the smallest amount of effort to pass any legislation, whether the effects of it are good or bad. Come January, Republicans can do whatever they want to do. And that's where we enter the "finesse" part from the Republican party.
Republicans know how racist and misogynistic this country is. Democrats know how racist and misogynistic this country is. The only people seemingly lost on this issue are the racist and misogynistic people who voted for Donald Trump. Because of this, Republicans saw their window of opportunity and took it. They played to the alt-right, to the moderates, and even to some Democrats. Because of the racism and misogyny that bleeds deep in this country, Republicans won all three branches of government in one night. And they did it all by promising to ruin Washington insiders. Ironic, right?
Fast forward to this week where we got a peek at who could potentially be in Donald Trump's cabinet. Guess who make appearances in large numbers? Those same people who he promised to destroy. A few familiar establishment names include Mike Huckabee, Jeff Sessions, Tom Cotton, David Clarke (that Black sheriff who I always shade in my articles for saying Black Lives Matter is in a war against police), Nikki Haley, and Reince Priebus. There was one outsider in particular who shook us all up: Stephen Bannon.
Don't worry, he's a different article for a different week.
All in all, it is evident that the GOP played racist America by pushing a rhetoric that said that they, mostly middle and lower class white people, will rise to the top with the help of Donald Trump and all his ideas to change Washington, D.C. from the inside out. Just look at the list. In less than a week, Trump changed his entire message. Don't blame him, though. Blame who I'm going to refer to as the GOP Mafia: Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus, and Mitch McConnell. They're the ones who finessed America.
