Jason Sattler

Opinion columnist

A federal judge found last summer that North Carolina Republicans had passed voting restrictions that “target African Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to “impose cures for problems that did not exist.”

In other words, North Carolina’s GOP was trying to cure an epidemic of black people voting.

The ruling confirmed that conservatives in a crucial swing state had been engaging in unrepentant suppression of black voters — yet not one prominent Republican threatened to quit the GOP, as many had over the presidential nomination of Donald Trump. There weren’t even vague condemnations of their own party’s resumption of this nation’s centuries-long effort to deny African Americans the ballot.

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But the same silence did not meet President Trump’s insistence this month that "many sides" were at fault for the violence at the “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, Va., which left counterprotester Heather Heyer dead.

Members of the president’s own party quickly denounced Trump’s rhetoric, if not him. "We should call evil by its name," Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said. "My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home."

Why has Trump’s comfort for white supremacists provoked bipartisan recriminations while North Carolina’s GOP’s effort to deny black Americans the vote did not? Why are conservatives silent about reports that the Indiana GOP has limited early voting in urban areas while letting it flourish in suburban communities?

Perhaps Republicans know they get away with policies that enforce white supremacy through voting restrictions and mass incarceration, but to do this, they must reject public displays of bigotry. This unstated compromise is the heart of a strategy that has helped the party accumulate more political power than at any time since the Great Depression.

Maybe you think it’s a coincidence that GOP voters are 86% white, or that Democrats have not won a majority of the white vote since 1964. What you can’t deny is that the GOP has built up an awesome coalition of geographically well dispersed, reliable voters that is extraordinarily diverse — if you consider white voters in their 50s, 60s and 70s diverse.

The Republican approach to white-identity politics has been reinforced in the past decade by adding new voting restrictions and more effective racial gerrymandering on top of felon disenfranchisement that combine to diminish the power of non-white voters. But it has been stoked for generations by an assault on public services that has been fed by the dog whistle that “government" equaled "coddling of non-whites.”

This doesn’t mean there isn’t a sincere philosophy of “limited government” that appeals to many on the right. The desire to cut red tape is a great argument for automatic voter registration, which Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law this week in Illinois.

It’s just revealing that conservatives seem to summon outrage when a clerk says "Happy Holidays," but they can't find it when government excess victimizes someone who isn't white.

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Like the National Rifle Association's muted reaction to the case of Philando Castile, a black gun owner fatally shot by a police officer during a routine traffic stop, widespread conservative backlash to presidential commissioner Kris Kobach’s attempt to purge voters from all 50 states is almost impossible to find. And though Attorney General Jeff Sessions has run into some criticism for abandoning the bipartisan movement toward criminal justice reform, he has faced far more for recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

All 16 top-tier Republican candidates for president in 2016 winked at white supremacy by refusing to make an issue of Trump’s birtherism — though Trump did not reject this racist conspiracy theory about President Obama's citizenship until less than two months before the general election.

The birther didn’t win the GOP primary despite his lusty embrace of race baiting; he won it because of his race baiting. His cartoonish scapegoating of immigrants was so offensive to some on the right that they feared he’d wreck the GOP brand.

Instead, he won — with some help from James Comey, Vladimir Putin and the Koch brothers. The respectable GOP “establishment” supposedly sat out the 2016 election, but the donor network led by the billionaire brothers helped the party keep the Senate and perhaps gain the White House by pushing Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and North Carolina’s Richard Burr over the finish line by larger margins than Trump beat Hillary Clinton in these key states.

Most Republicans refuse to participate in the sort of race baiting with the subtlety of skywriting that is practiced by Trump. But they’re aware of the dirty deal their party has made, which is why they’re so eager for the president to shut his mouth before he blows the whole scam up.

Jason Sattler, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a columnist for The National Memo. Follow him on Twitter @LOLGOP.

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