Pat Buchanan: Middle America Will Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

By Patrick J. Buchanan
Jul. 23, 2019

“Send her back! Send her back!”

The 13 seconds of that chant at the rally in North Carolina, in response to Donald Trump’s recital of the outrages of Somali-born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, will not soon be forgotten, or forgiven.

This phrase will have a long shelf life. T-shirts emblazoned with “Send Her Back!” and Old Glory are already on sale on eBay.

Listen for the chant at future Trump rallies, as his followers now realize that it drives the elites straight up the wall.

That 13-second refrain and Trump’s earlier tweet to the four radical congresswomen of “the Squad” to “go back” to where they came from is being taken as the smoking gun that convicts the president as an irredeemable racist whose “base” is poisoned by the same hate.

Writes The New York Times‘ Charles Blow in a column that uses “racist” or “racism” more than 30 times: Americans who do not concede that Trump is a racist—are themselves racists: “Make no mistake. Denying racism or refusing to call it out is also racist.”

But what is racism?

Is it not a manifest dislike or hatred of people of color because of their color? Trump was not denouncing the ethnicity or race of Ilhan Omar in his rally speech. He was reciting and denouncing what Omar said, just as Nancy Pelosi was denouncing what Omar and the Squad were saying and doing when she mocked their posturing and green agenda.

Clearly Americans disagree on what racism is. Writes Blow: “A USA Today/Ipsos poll published on July 17 found that more than twice as many Americans believe that people who call others racists do so ‘in bad faith’ compared with those who do not believe it.”

Republicans and conservatives believe “racist” is a term the left employs to stigmatize, smear, and silence adversaries. As one wag put it, a racist is a conservative who is winning an argument with a liberal.

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