It is quite real, except that the name might not really fit. Only a dog can hear a dog whistle. The point of “dog-whistle” racist messaging is not that only the intended audience can hear it. Everybody can hear it, and everybody knows what it means. The point is plausible deniability based on intentional ambiguity.
I will also agree that with maybe one notable exception ( the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians) that Trump’s positions are your typical Republican positions. As far as I can tell Trump is for all of the following. Lower taxes on the rich, anti-immigration, for torure of terrorists, against Obamacare, against the Iran nuclear deal, against marriage equality, and so on. He just expresses his support for these positions in what most people assumed was a more politically incorrect way than establishment Republicans.
Oddly, it seems *only *the opposition can hear it, never it’s intended audience.
Whatever his methodology, I hope he picks up the pace.
Trump is helping to kill the Republican Party (at least its chances of regaining the Presidency for some years to come) by delaying any reckoning over the GOP’s movement to the far-right.
It’s been a delusion among many in the party that its defeats at the polls are due to nominating RINOs who are not “true” deeply conservative Republicans, and if only someone pure at heart could be nominated, they’d sweep to victory.
If they were able to do this in 2016 and see their candidate crushed, it might provoke enough soul-searching and center-conservative activism so that the party could get back to its decades-old roots and have a chance of providing a real alternative.
But with Trump, any such hopes are delayed. He gets trounced by Clinton, and there will still be a ton of activists claiming Trump was rejected because he isn’t a True Conservative, and that defeat wouldn’t have happened with Cruz or some other rightist favorite.
Rinse and repeat in 2020.
I get what you’re saying and I agree that the Republicans have been rationalizing there losses as you say, but I don’t think the next election will change anything. And that’s even assuming that the party manages to keep Trump from the nomination. Who then would be the perfect conservative candidate? Cruz?
No matter who they nominate, assuming he loses, the next theory will be that he was the wrong flavor of conservative. Too theocratic, or too socially conservative as opposed to economically conservative, or too …
Actually, I think Trump getting crushed like that creature perched on his scalp would bring a moment of reckoning. The “not conservative enough” complaints against McCain and Romney were real enough, but they were directed at a secondary issue. The primary (pardon the pun) issue is that they were both “yeah, sure, whatever” choices who didn’t have any great enthusiastic backing. This won’t be the case for Trump (assuming he isn’t diddled out of the nomination somehow). In the wake of an Election Day fiasco, the “not conservative enough” complaint won’t be a consoling excuse generally accepted throughout the GOP – it’ll be an attack by the party establishment against the peasant rank-and-file who saddled the party with this albatross. The attacks and counter-attacks will start flying from there, much more intensely than the rather cursory internal debate (remember the post-2012 “autopsy report”?) the last few times.
^^^^
Completely agree with Steve. Over at CNN, David Axelrod has an excellent opinion piece on the implosion of the Republican Party. What makes the disaster so utterly complete is that even if they manage to bypass Trump, the #2 guy left standing is Cruz, who may be less flagrantly racist and misogynistic but is almost equally offensive to the party establishment. The party base that once claimed an aversion to RINOs went all-out for plain crazy this time, and not in a subtle way. And the leadership is showcasing their own nuttiness in their obstinacy against Merrick Garland. It’s a perfect storm of crazy, visible in crystal clarity, as if every single member of this deranged base was wearing a dead orange marmoset on his head just like the pestilential cretin that they’re voting for.
I still cant understand why not even one Moderate Republican even* tried* to run.
With every other candidate rushing to the right, he’d have had a chance, i think.
Yeah, that’s what Huntsman thought in the 2012 election. He lasted less than six months. You can’t win primaries as a moderate, and you can’t win elections as a conservative.
Got a name or two?
John Boehner, McCain, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Dean Heller, Mark Kirk, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki.
The last two did run- sorta, true.
Many would consider Kasich a moderate, or at least they would consider him sane. The interesting thing is that as hopeless as his primary campaign has been, he polls the strongest against Hillary by a fair margin. In fact he’s the only one of the three who could win.
Obviously not an absolute, but contains an important truth as evidenced by the above. A more accurate statement in the current political climate is that you have to be a raving loon to attract the base in Republican primaries, and raving loons can’t win general elections. This is why I agree that this election season will be a watershed moment and a time of reckoning and reconstruction for the Republican Party. It was inevitable that at some point they’d have to realize that moderateness and centrism, common intelligence, pragmatic and viable policies, and government experience are assets and not liabilities. ETA: Oh, and bipartisanship. Yep, the willingness to work with the other side of the aisle is actually constructive and not the sign of a traitor to the Cause! 
They were all scared off by the fearsome power of the Jeb! machine who had raised more money than God and was going to steamroll through the election as fait accompli with the Romney 2.0 style “You’ve tried all the rest, now why not settle on Good Ole Jeb!” candidate.
Remember the distant past of September 2015 when this was what the world looked like?
Oh, the intended audience hears it loud and clear!
Too obstructionist to be a “moderate.”
But they can’t because they’ve been so successful at gerrymandering the districts that the only viable opposition is from within their own party. That means that the only real risk to re-election is the danger of being beaten in a primary, and the only way to avoid that is to never even hint at working with the other party. They’re doomed by their own success.
Maybe April and May of 2015. By September 2015 The Donald was the front runner.
“Plausible deniability” also encompasses self-denial. Of course they understand the message. They just don’t have to admit to what it is.
And it started with Nixon — “law and order” and “silent majority” means crack down on black people and activists. “End forced busing” and “school choice” means “preserve segregation.”
The dog whistle covers both sides and DrDeth’s denial that the intended recipient of that message is the only one who doesn’t hear it perfectly illustrates the effectiveness of the deniability/self-denial.
Trump is blowing the cover off both kinds of denial and going straight for explicit racism and sexism and a big chunk of conservatives and Republicans love the shit out of that. It’s the ones for whom denial was key that this is now a problem.
Prove it. :dubious:We have a thread on this already. Let us take the discussion there, please.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=786578&page=2