Jonathan Chait, on the Republican Presidential candidates’ reaction to the Brussels bombing:

The great benefit enjoyed by the United States over Europe is its multicultural character, in which citizenship is not identified with a racial group. That multiculturalism has allowed American Muslims to assimilate much more easily than in Europe, which makes Americans safer — though not, of course, perfectly safe — from terrorism. Looking at this state of affairs, with a dangerous, ghettoized European Muslim population and a much less threatening, well-assimilated American Muslim population, Cruz proposes to treat American Muslims like European ones. He endorses racial profiling of “Muslim neighborhoods.”

The Islamophobia that has permeated the Republican party and that is further pushed by its politicians is dangerous to us all, but they don’t see it that way. They think hatred of people will somehow win votes from their base.

This is nothing new to that party, of course. It began in 1968 when Richard Nixon and minions concocted the “Southern strategy” as a conscious method of winning Southern voters and converting Democrats in that region by opposing civil rights and voting rights legislation and appealing to the anti-black racism still openly in sight there.