… The Republican Party has struggled to get significant support from black voters for decades. What’s different now is that many GOP officials seem to have stopped trying to speak to them, no longer paying even minimal lip service to their concerns. Changes in both parties’ bases of support have shifted the incentives for elected Republicans, and you can see that in their rhetoric. …
I talked to a few Republican strategists about the party’s relationship with blacks. They declined to speak with their names attached, wary of criticizing the sitting Republican president. But they suggested that Trump, as the leading Republican in the country, was pushing the party in a bad direction on racial issues that other GOP officials struggle to resist, in part because GOP voters have embraced Trump’s approach. CONT.
Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight