The Middle American Core of the GOP

The anxieties white Americans have about their place and future in this country are real, justifiable, and defensible.

The March 4 Trump rally in Washington, D.C., in March 2017. (Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The title of my latest column in Chronicles refers to a piece by Charles Blow in The New York Times, “White Extinction Anxiety.” Blow argued that white Americans who are anxious about their place in America were instrumental in Donald Trump’s 2016 election. I argue his analysis was correct, but the conclusion was wrong. In other words, their “anxiety” is real, justifiable, and defensible.

I want to touch on and expand on some of the things I wrote for Chronicles here. This is a topic most people give a wide berth, but it’s worth engaging, especially as the GOP’s tendency is to hasten its transformation into a “moderate” version of the Democratic Party. Indeed, that is the impression you get upon reading the “autopsy” commissioned by the Republican National Committee in the wake of the 2012 election.