During the 1992 gubernatorial campaign in Louisiana, Democrat Edwin Edwards famously joked about his Republican opponent, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, "We're both wizards under the sheets." The result was laughter on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line--and a victory for Edwards.
But no one's laughing now. If Democrats are disgusted that 2016 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has hesitated to disavow the support of Duke and white supremacist groups, Republicans hoping to regain the White House are terrified. Mitt Romney, who four years ago accepted Trump's endorsement and echoed his Birther talking point ("no one's ever asked to see my birth certificate") during his failed 2012 run, called the Donald's remarks "disqualifying and disgusting." In his Washington Post op-ed Monday, former Florida GOP Congressman and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough fretted "the party will kill itself" and closed by asking:

So is this how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies?

Well, I've got news for Scarborough and his Republican allies now getting the vapors from the stench of the GOP's embrace of racial politics. The party of Abraham Lincoln died 50 years ago. If the modern party of states' rights, nullification, secession, slavery-free Confederate History Month and draconian voter ID laws is going to throw Donald Trump under the bus for trafficking in casual race-baiting, the Republicans are going to need a much bigger bus. As it turns out, the list of the GOP's "disqualified" is a long one.
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