Sam Tanenhaus’s Fevered Historical Imagination About the Racist GOP

Sam Tanenhaus’s Fevered Historical Imagination About the Racist GOP

Where to begin with the screed in The New Republic, “Original Sin: Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people,” mislabeled “an historical investigation”?

In his claim that racism is the original and irredeemable sin of Republicans, Tanenhaus sets up the contrast to “the civil rights pageantry of the [Obama second] inauguration—Abraham Lincoln’s Bible and Martin Luther King’s, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s swearing in of Joe Biden, Beyoncé’s slinky glamor [sic], the verses read by the gay Cuban poet Richard Blanco.”

In his enthusiasm, Tanenhaus missed the irony of using the word “pageantry,” which the...