When you stand in a forest, you see trees, but you have no idea of the immensity of the forest...Such is the current situation for the GOP when they face Trump's racism.
Dana Milbank in WaPo
So Trump’s enablers are unnerved by his overt racism — not because it’s despicable on its face but because they fear losing power. And the enablers fret, but in private.
The silence, often attributed to cowardice, is really complicity. As I’ve noted, racial resentment has become the primary driver and predictor of support for the Republican Party, a trend that has accelerated under Trump. If Republican lawmakers continue to “fret privately” as Trump bases his reelection on clumsy racist demagoguery, they must be held to account for condoning the redefinition of the GOP as the new home of the white power movement.
Their silence isn’t just enabling Trump; it’s also enabling white supremacy to hijack a major American political party.
The others — Tillis, Perdue, Cornyn, Ernst, Gardner, McSally and Daines — responded as Republicans generally do when asked about Trump’s racism: with crickets.
They think their silence protects them. But it does something else: It turns them into the handmaidens of white supremacy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/06/silent-republican-lawmakers-are-handmaidens-white-supremacy/