15 July 2019 — 1122 mdt

If Trump's net approval in Montana were underwater, Daines and Gianforte would be dumping cold water on his toxic Tweets

But Trump is still more popular than not in Montana — and so Daines and Gianforte, hoping to ride Trump’s coattails to victory in 2020, are maintaining a disgraceful silence about their President’s unhinged, bigoted, attacks on four Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump, knowing the United States is still a white majority nation, wants to make the 2020 election about the alleged “threats” to our way of life he claims are posed by the reverse racism that those who are not white practice.

Trump used language so ugly it might have embarrassed Pitchfork Ben Tillman, but apparently for Daines and Gianforte, and their equally brave fellow Republicans, their senses of decency numbed even to Biblical provocations, Trump’s malevolently mendacious Tweets are just his style, just his game, and unworthy of even a murmur of disapprobation.

Democrats, of course, are outraged — outraged by Trump’s depraved Tweets, outraged by the Republican’s silent acquiescence to that depravity — and rightly so. Such provocations cannot go unanswered — but they must not be answered in a way that continues a debate over race, for that’s what Trump wants. If the election is about health care, global warming, education, economic opportunity for the middle class, Democrats can win. But if the election is about race, affirmative action, reparations, so-called white privilege, bussing, and the alleged hordes of brown skinned Latin Americans sneaking across the Mexican border, laden with drugs, infected with disease, allied with Islamoterrorists, hellbent on taking jobs from law-abiding Americans, Trump wins.

Daines and Gianforte probably don’t need to brownnose Trump to win their elections in 2020. They have weak records, but fairly strong organizations, plenty of money, and are running in a state that is right of the economic center, slightly libertarian in social attitudes, appreciates public lands, and appreciates — and demands — elected officials with the wit and grit to speak out in times of moral crisis. There’s still time for them to come to Jesus on Trump’s reprehensible Tweets. Will they have to fortitude and wisdom to do so?