Billionaire Donald Trump caused widespread outrage during his announcement that he had decided to run for president. Describing the majority of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, Trump’s comments were widely ridiculed as an outrageous generalization.
But despite the comment – perhaps because of it – Trump has soared in the polls, and on Sunday, his closest rival, Ben Carson, made similarly disparaging about Muslims.
"[I wouldn’t] advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," Carson said on Meet on the Press.
During a speech at the New School over the weekend, linguist Noam Chomsky pointed out that these kinds of comments aren’t aberrations, but rather the true face of the Republican Party.
"I think we should recognize that the other candidates are not that different," he said. "Just take a look at their views."
He compares Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, both of whom stated they would bomb Iran soon after coming into office.
"This is just off the spectrum of not only international opinion, but also relative sanity."
Chomsky goes on to provide a theory about how the party came to be so homogeneous.
"Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes…So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time," he said.
Those sectors include fundamentalist evangelicals and xenophobic nativists.
"These have not been an organized political force in the past. They are now. That’s the base of the Republican Party, and you see it in the primaries," he said.
"Trump may be comic relief, but it’s not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important."
If Chomsky is right, then no matter who wins the Republican primary, that candidate will have to court those radical interest groups all the way into the general election.
Here’s to hoping sanity prevails.
