As The Post’s article on the ensuing controversy gingerly put it, “Trump’s latest comments recall his fraught history when it comes to racial insensitivity.” Indeed they do.

Reasonable Republicans could have responded to this in a simple way, one that could retain a shred of their own dignity while not condemning the president more harshly than they’re comfortable with. They could say simply that this was a very poor choice of words, and while he can defend himself vigorously, he shouldn’t compare his situation to that of people who were murdered in the most brutal way imaginable.

AD

AD

They might even clarify, for those who aren’t aware, that lynching was not just about murder and not just about mob violence but was a central component of a systematic, long-running campaign of terrorism against African Americans often performed with the approval and even participation of the authorities.

And a few Republicans did say things along those lines. But some just couldn’t bring themselves to do anything but defend him. Such as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham:

“This is a lynching in every sense. This is un-American,” he told reporters of the impeachment proceedings, arguing that the word “lynching” did not carry an inherently racial connotation. “African Americans have [been] lynched, other people have been lynched throughout history,” Graham said. “What does lynching mean? That a mob grabs you, they don’t give you a chance to defend yourself, they don’t tell you what happened to you, they just destroy you. That’s exactly what’s going on in the United States House of Representatives right now.”

In every sense? Really?

Graham was not the only one to attempt the de-racialization of the term. “If you look at the definition of lynching, it has nothing to do with African Americans,” said Rush Limbaugh.

AD

Which is technically true, in the same sense as there are definitions of the word “holocaust” that don’t refer specifically to Hitler and the Jews. But it is most certainly what comes up in everyone’s mind when you use that term, so if you’re doing so to refer to something other than what it invokes, you should be prepared to own the comparison.

AD

While this is of course about Trump’s “racial insensitivity,” it’s also about Trump’s sense of victimhood, which he has cultivated and luxuriated in ever since becoming president. At least Richard Nixon had the good sense to do most of his whining behind closed doors; Trump is out every day talking about how unfairly he’s being treated and how no one has ever been so brutalized as he is.

As ludicrous as the claim is that there’s something unfair going on in the impeachment inquiry — in which Republican members of Congress have ample opportunity to question witnesses, by the way, and we’re only in the earliest stages — in his victimhood Trump is, as in so many ways, just an exaggerated version of what his party already was.

AD

For years, conservatives have portrayed themselves as America’s most oppressed minority, suffering through an endless series of attacks and indignities with only their righteousness to protect them. They’re forced to avert their eyes from department store signs reading “Happy Holidays.” They have to treat gay people with respect, Their own children tell them that the language they use is offensive.

AD

Just Monday, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley attacked my colleague Greg Sargent as a “smug, rich liberal elitist,” part of that overclass always looking down on people like Hawley, who is but a mere son of a banker and graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School.

That sense of victimhood has become central to conservative identity, giving the right that feeling of nobility that can come only from being an underdog fighting powerful forces. But conservatives are not America’s oppressed, and Donald Trump is not a victim. An impeachment inquiry is not a lynching.

AD

Please, Republicans: You don’t have to abandon Trump completely, but at least you can admit that.