OPINION:
It’s the biggest “Big Lie” in politics today. And it is falling apart faster than President Biden riding a bicycle at the beach on a sunny afternoon.
A century and a half after the war that ended slavery in America and nearly 70 years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned itself and ruled school segregation unconstitutional, Democrat politicians in Washington still cling to the party’s dark past of segregating people by the color of their skin. Today, they call it “identity politics.”
It sounds just as harmless as the terms Democrats invented in the old days to justify their racism. “Separate but equal,” the Supreme Court ruled in its 1896 opinion Plessy v. Ferguson to enshrine racial segregation in our daily lives. It would take the High Court nearly 60 years to overturn itself and begin bleeding the poison from the Democratic Party’s segregation laws.
Truly, it is a new day in America. What we are seeing now is the slow death of the Democratic Party’s “identity politics.”
In Texas last week, a Mexican-born woman named Mayra Flores running as a Republican won a special election for an open House seat that had been held by Democrats for more than 100 years. Her district in the Rio Grande Valley is 85% Hispanic.
For decades, Democrats have claimed ownership of Hispanic voters — just as they have always claimed ownership of African Americans since even before they were allowed to vote. Democrat politicians pander to these “brown” voters with promises of open borders and amnesty. They attack any Republican who opposes these policies as “anti-Hispanic” or “racist.”
All these attacks are translated into Spanish and run in campaign commercials on Spanish language TV and radio in Hispanic districts.
The Democrat campaign of “identity politics” has been so relentless — and successful in the political media — that even mainstream Republican politicians fell for it over the years. Republican leaders like former President George W. Bush and never-president John McCain insisted that the only way to court Hispanic voters was by pandering false promises like amnesty and open borders.
It took the Great Orange Monster to shatter the myth with a simple law-and-order campaign that put “America First.”
Former President Donald Trump viciously excoriated criminals streaming across the open border from Mexico carrying deadly drugs into America — and stunned the political world by improving Republican performance among Hispanic voters.
Now comes Mrs. Flores, exposing the deep prejudice of political journalists and further destroying the myth that Hispanic voters want open borders and amnesty for lawbreakers.
Mrs. Flores, the wife of a Border Patrol agent, did not win due to the color of her skin. Nor did she win because she was born in Mexico.
She won because of the content of her character and her promises to make where she lives now better.
Her campaign was not some kind of a fluke. Voters were not tricked into supporting her because of her “identity.”
She ran an unflinching campaign embracing America as a land of opportunity and promising to secure the border.
“Now I am living my American dream,” Mrs. Flores says into the camera. “We must secure our borders and keep our families safe.”
It turns out that after years and years of lies and racial resegregation by Democrat politicians, Hispanic voters actually care about security and prosperity for their families. Just like all voters do — regardless of skin color. Stop and think just how patently racist it is for Democrats and the political media to insist otherwise.
It’s bad enough they judge voters by the color of their skin. But Democrats and their racist lapdogs in the media actually believe that because of the color of their skin, Hispanic voters somehow do not care about the safety of their own families. Truly sick.
Republican voters in Virginia sent a similar message this week by electing Yesli Vega to be their nominee against Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger in the state’s 7th Congressional District. Like Mrs. Flores, Mrs. Vega did not win due to the color of her skin (she is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants). She won due to the content of her character.
A deputy sheriff in Prince William County, Mrs. Vega was inspired to politics after her brother was nearly killed by MS-13 gang members. She ran on a bold, pro-America campaign to enforce laws and secure the southern border.
It is worth noting the interesting timing of the collapse of the Democrat party’s Big Lie about “identity politics.” Voters of every color, creed and background are concerned about not just security for themselves and their families, but also about the economy. Everybody knows that security and the economy are the two most powerful issues that force voters to look past the lies that politicians peddle. A third issue that is also propelling Democrat voters into the arms of Republicans is education, as we saw with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s stunning upset election in solidly blue Virginia.
The truth is that “identity politics” is totally incompatible with the American form of free self-governance. We settled this issue in a brutal Civil War. And we further settled it in a long, painful march through the civil rights movement.
In America, people must be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. As the simple words chiseled into the pediment of the Supreme Court read: “Equal justice under law.”
Obviously, we as a country have not always hewed to that ideal. But it has always been the ideal for which we strive. And striving for that ideal has dragged us kicking and screaming closer to perfection with every passing generation.
Yet Democrat politicians in Washington cannot let go of this evil tendency to judge people by the color of their skin. Their time is finally up.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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