Dems' use of the race card does real harm

Recently, a few high-profile events have illustrated the Democratic Party's overdependence on the race card and Democrats' need to wallow in identity politics.

Since President Donald Trump came to office, the left has ramped up its attacks on Republicans. Democrats are trying to rally liberal activists and a cooperative media to cast most everyone within the GOP as racists who sympathize with white supremacists.

Democrats howl about Republicans, make everything about race or "diversity," and don't notice that voters are turned off.

In the process, Democrats are further alienating many rational, thoughtful voters. It is easy to see that liberals' insistence on politically correct identity politics isn't just idiotic. In the past 24 hours, we are reminded that it is also dangerous.

Even though it is mostly an inside-the-Beltway story, the Democrats' latest example of racially tinged hypocrisy is revealing.

According to its website, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) "is an equal opportunity employer" --- except when it's not.

Here's an example.

According to recent reports, a DNC official wrote in an email to her Democrat colleagues that she would prefer to exclude "cisgender straight white males" from consideration for jobs with the DNC's technology department "since they're already in the majority."

It says a lot that in response to this email, an anonymous DNC source told the Daily Wire: "Clearly the DNC is doubling down on a failed strategy that has alienated staffers and voters alike. We want to be judged based on the quality of our work, not on identity politics. How can we trust the leadership of the DNC if they don't even trust us?" And that's from a Democrat. I couldn't have said it better myself.

The Democratic Party's support for identity politics extends well beyond the walls of the DNC.

Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York was allegedly committed by a Muslim immigrant who came to the United States on a so-called "diversity visa."

And, it figures, the bill that helped create the program was introduced by none other than Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who stood on the Senate floor in 2006, saying: "As a Member of the House, I helped create this program, which my colleague, Senator Kennedy, created in the Senate in 1990. . .. So this is an excellent program. Nobody has said it has done a bad job."

Well, here we are. Oh, and by the way, remember that when the diversity visa was created, the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. That should give pause to anyone who thinks Democrats should return to power.

The fact is, in the land of opportunity, Democrats prefer that you meet their standards of diversity before you can participate. Considering they have no economic message and no plan to create jobs or grow the economy, they desperately rely on perpetuating lies and divisions through slanderous attacks on decent Republicans.

Most recently, in the Virginia governor's race, Democrats are painting Republican Ed Gillespie, who I've known and contributed to for years, as a bigot. The Ralph Northam campaign is standing by a mailer they sent out depicting Gillespie and Trump as white nationalists akin to those who marched in Charlottesville with tiki torches yelling hate speech.

And only after the tragedy in New York City yesterday did the Latino Victory Fund pull its vile ad that portrays a white Gillespie supporter as being on the prowl in a pickup truck to hunt down and attack Latino and Muslim children. Think about that.

Can you imagine the outcry if Republicans had run an ad featuring someone with dark skin threatening white children? It would rightfully be universally condemned. But with Democrats today - crickets.

Even for a cynic like me, that ad was about as low as it gets. It was much worse than the Willy Horton ad in 1988. The Democrats' ad doesn't just promote racial fear, panic and desperation, it shows the sorry state of Democratic politics. For a decent person such as Gillespie to be slandered and smeared is beyond the pale of what is tolerable. And I have a pretty big pale. The ad doesn't just target Gillespie, it uses frightened children as props to deliberately mislabel all Republicans.

The Democrats use identity politics to develop their campaigns, organize their party and impose their will via government policy. Qualified people are excluded from service, good candidates are smeared, and Americans are put in danger. But somehow, Democrats think this is progress. They think this is justice. It is what they want to do more of when they are in power.

Shame on them.

Ed Rogers is a a political consultant and a veteran of the White House and several national campaigns. He is the chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group, which he founded with former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour in 1991."