'How Low Republicans Have Sunk': Conservative Writer Predicts Trump and the GOP Will Get 'Even Worse' If Not Defeated

WIth President Donald Trump pushing a racist ad that critics are calling "so, so much worse than 'Willie Horton' ever was," conservative writer and ex-Republican Jennifer Rubin declared that the whole GOP is "nearly entirely focused on whipping up xenophobia."

In a new column for the Washington Post, Rubin argued that the new ad, smearing immigrants and Democrats with the image of a Mexican immigrant who was given the death penalty for murder, shows how low the party has sunk.

"We have not seen individual Republican candidates, let alone House and Senate leaders, denounce the ad or insist that Trump take it down," she wrote. "Silence is assent. And therefore each one deserves the ire of decent voters."

But it's not just GOP lawmakers who are complicit. Rubin made clear that White House staffers and perhaps most perniciously, the leaders at Fox News, are also to blame.

"I would say that this is in large part your doing," she said. "You’ve spent years drumming up fear of immigrants, misrepresenting the danger they pose, blurring the line between criminals and noncriminals (including “dreamers”) and sending dog whistles — no, make that trumpet blasts — to the white nationalists. I would say to you that Fox is not a news organization but a source of material and affirmation for the worst elements in our society, a small sliver of whom become violent."

She added: "It’s not a place where reputable news people should want to work, nor a network that advertisers should support or viewers should indulge."

Rubin thinks the only proper response from voters is to take an unequivocal stand against every Republican on the ballot. If they're not soundly defeated, she warned, "Republicans will get even worse, as will the conduct they inspire." 

It's worth considering what it will take to break the fever in the GOP. Obviously, the party has been deeply corrupt and harbored venomous racism for decades. After 2012, the GOP elite thought it needed to moderate and reach out to non-white voters if it were going to be successful, but Trump's surprise victory appears to have put that notion to bed.

We can only hope that the GOP overlearned that lesson. Trump won, but he won as a historically unpopular candidate, and he's governed as a historically unpopular president. Because his win was so unexpected, it seemed like a vindication of his view of politics, rather than a fluke. If, as seems likely, the win was a fluke, and the GOP gets crushed in the midterms, that may be enough of a shock to convince the Republican Party to jettison its blatant racism.