Republican racists should thank Trump

by B. R. GOWANI

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush with his wife Columba Bush PHOTO/Hola Arkansas

Racism has always been part and parcel of the United States political, social, and economic system. The difference the Trump presidential candidacy has made is that it has encouraged many of the Republican candidates, who were harboring such feelings covertly, to display it overtly to counter Donald Trump‘s popularity. Trump’s high rating in polls, despite his racist remarks against the Mexicans (11% of the population) living in the US, has prompted other Republican candidates to showcase their bigotry in their own crude and illiterate manner.

While Trump and another candidate Senator Ted Cruz have announced their intention to attend a conference opposing President Barack Obama’s peace deal with Iran, arranged by anti-Muslim/pro-Israel think tank, Center for Security Policy headed by Frank Gaffney, other candidates are trying hard to catch up in the polling game. (Gaffney is a sick person who suffers from hallucinations, in which one sees things which are not there; he has pointed out that the Missile Defense Agency (of the US Department of Defense) logo is a morphing of Islamic crescent and star and Obama’s campaign logo.

One of the desperate candidates, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, is trying to lift himself out of the single digit poll-hole. For that, he is visiting/contacting former/current mayors, governors, Congresspersons, and others. He also has to answer the news media questions about his brother’s criminal war in Iraq. (His father is also a mass murderer who went to war against Iraq in 1991.) So in his own way he flip flops on questions.

“When we left Iraq, security had been arranged, Al Qaeda had been taken out. There was a fragile system that could have been brought up to eliminate the sectarian violence.”

But elsewhere Jeb Bush says,

“The decision to dismantle the Iraqi army was a mistake, and I think my brother [George W. Bush] would admit that today.”

And now Jeb Bush has openly shown his racism. For the racist segment of the US, which is quite large, Trump has become their Sigmund Freud who is inciting their subconscious hatred of the minorities to come out in the open. He recently suggested that the citizenship of the “anchor babies” (children born in the US to undocumented immigrants) should be revoked. Jeb Bush also talked about “anchor baby” for lack of a better term, to use his words. When he came under criticism, he clarified:

“What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed, where there’s organized efforts, and frankly it’s more related to Asian people coming into our country having children in that organized effort, taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship.”

Bush can’t go after Mexicans, like Trump does it, because Bush’s wife is of Mexican origin, so he went after Asians. Problem is that Asia is a large continent housing Arabs, Central Asians, South Asians, South East Asians, and others. It has been pointed out Bush was referring to “Chinese birth tourism” (which itself is not very correct) as people from several countries come to the US to give birth. Besides, Louisiana Governor and a fellow candidate, Bobby Jindal is an Asian too.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

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