Trump's muse Ann Coulter on “Latin American rape culture”

[Hortensis]

This is from a new The Atlantic article on how the Republican Party's white nativism is in grave danger of turning the white man's party into a permanent minority--in exactly the same way it killed itself off in California.

When it comes to latinos, Donald Trump has a muse: Ann Coulter. Last June, when Trump called Mexican immigrants “rapists” in his presidential-campaign announcement, the comment took many journalists by surprise. But that’s because many journalists hadn’t read Coulter’s work. Her book Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, which hit bookstores two weeks before Trump entered the race, is packed with statements about “Latin American rape culture” and “the gusto for gang rape, incest and child rape of our main immigrant groups.” On page 191 Coulter writes, “The rape of little girls isn’t even considered a crime in Latino culture.” On page 173 she warns, “Another few years of our current immigration policies, and we’ll all have to move to Canada to escape the rapes.” Before announcing his presidential run, Trump called Adios, America a “great read.” Since Trump began his campaign, Coulter has occasionally warmed up crowds at his rallies.

This's so awful I couldn't resist starting with it (as the article does), but the really interesting discussion is this phenomenon as symptom and cause the continued self-destruction of the GOP. Not that conservatives themselves, half our nation, are going anywhere and they will require a party to belong to.

Although trump has broken with his party’s establishment on many issues, immigration has been the most central to his rise. His “rapists” comment dominated media coverage of his campaign launch, and his pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border is, by far, his best-known policy proposal. When his events grow “a little boring,” the real-estate mogul told The New York Times’ editorial board, “I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts.” According to a Pew Research Center poll this spring, the wall divides pro-Trump from anti-Trump Republicans more sharply than any other issue.

But Trump is not the first Republican to put illegal immigration at the heart of his presidential bid. Pete Wilson did it 20 years ago.

...

And that was a literally fatal error -- fatal to GOP power in California.

Almost two decades later, the California Republican Party still has not recovered. Latinos—who now constitute almost 40 percent of California’s population and more than a quarter of its eligible voters—have voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1996 by at least 40 points. Democrats today control every statewide elected office, and make up close to two-thirds of the state Senate and assembly, along with almost three-quarters of California’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.

What’s more, state policy has turned in a radically pro-immigrant direction. ... Even California’s Republican Party has changed. Last fall, it removed the phrase illegal alien from its platform and stripped out language calling on law-enforcement officials to immediately deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. On the question of “what to do with the millions of people who are currently here illegally,” the platform now states merely that Republicans “hold diverse views.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-white-strategy/485612/

[NurseJackie]

1. Ugh.

[underpants]

2. Has she been on college campus or military base recently?

Shut up Ann.

[Hortensis]

3. Coulter's talking to people who can afford to, and do, buy books.

Each new book heads straight for the best-seller lists. That's in part because her/Trump's followers are more affluent than Hlllary's or Bernie's.

And these "predominantly white male voters" are currently racing headlong for the cliff they're about to drive the nation's only white man's party off.

From ABC News:

In the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, released May 22, Trump led Clinton among men overall (56 percent to 34 percent), white male college graduates (59 to 33) and white men without college degrees (76 to 14).