The GOP Establishment is in full flight.

No Abraham Lincolns here.

In a shameful haste to embrace identity politics, the latter the political descendant of slavery and segregation, Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have stunningly given thumbs up to a judge who has made no bones about injecting his ethnic heritage into his role as a lawyer and judge.

In a broadside against Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who presiding over the case against Trump University (a case in itself riddled with bad judicial decision-making as the judge has assigned the case to a notoriously Clinton-supporting law firm — more of which later this week), Trump has assailed the Indiana-born judge as “of Mexican heritage” who has “an inherent conflict of interest.”

The response from the Speaker? “It’s reasoning I don’t relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that.” Said McConnell: “I think it’s a big mistake for our party to write off Latino Americans.” Hello? Speaker Ryan can’t relate to standing up to fight racism? Who, Senator McConnell, is writing off Latino Americans? And isn’t it time to get right with Lincoln and write off racism — aka in the 21st century, “identity politics”? Appallingly in the case of Ryan, his latest comments embracing out and out race-driven lawyering and judging comes only weeks after he said he stood for the “Party of Lincoln, Reagan, and Kemp.” Well that didn’t last long. Somewhere Abe, Ronnie, and Jack are baffled as to why their defender has suddenly thrown them over the side to embrace the absolute worst of racial politics.

Over in the Wall Street Journal, our friends on the editorial board have written an entire editorial on the subject entitled:

Trump and the ‘Mexican’ Judge Why equating ethnicity with judicial bias is so offensive.

Well, yes, “equating ethnicity with judicial bias” is offensive. Yet the WSJ has not a solitary word revealing to readers that Judge Curiel has been actively associated with the racially-centric San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association — a group entirely devoted to “equating ethnicity with judicial bias.” An association Curiel listed on his questionnaire filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee. The group, as I noted over at NewsBusters, specifically states its mission on its website as follows:

Our purpose is to advance the cause of equality, empowerment and justice for Latino attorneys and the Latino community in San Diego County through service and advocacy.

Note. The group supports “equality, empowerment and justice” not for all attorneys in San Diego — only for “Latino attorneys.”

Listing eight “goals” of the group, every one of which are ethnocentric, the first three reading:

Increase the overall number of Latinos in the legal profession.

Encourage and support Latino and Latina judicial candidates to apply to the bench.

Advocate for the promotion and retention of Latino and Latina attorneys and judicial officers.

Note well goal number two — “Encourage and support Latino and Latina judicial candidates to apply to the bench.” In other words? The group wants to put not qualified attorneys of any color or gender on the bench. No, the insistence is a racially-oriented drive to put only one group — a group pre-selected by ethnic heritage on the bench. (Can you imagine the uproar if the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had belonged to a “white attorneys association”? Answer: Yes, you can.) Why might this be? The answer is obvious.

In a day and age when the working assumption by the Left is that all minorities, Latinos in this case, are liberal, the way to liberal decisions is by backing openly race-centric judges of Latino heritage. To get decisions from the bench that are geared to supporting Latinos — not all Americans — but Latinos only.

This idea, by the way, is certainly not limited to Latinos. Recall the demand that retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall be replaced by a black nominee. President George H.W. Bush obliged with Judge Clarence Thomas. Thomas was quickly attacked by liberals the moment they realized he was a conservative. He is to this day attacked for being an “Uncle Tom” and a “traitor” to his race because the working assumption is that if you are black you are a liberal. And so it is with Latinos — and in this case Judge Curiel.

Most assuredly, Judge Gonzalo Curiel has gone out of his way to not only openly tie himself to this group of racially directed lawyers — but to participate in the left-wing agenda favored so deeply by leftist race-driven Hispanics. In 2014 the Judge served as a member of the group’s 2014 Scholarship Selection Committee, which in turn awarded a $1,500 scholarship to a self-advertised “undocumented.” Think of that for a moment. The very first act of this student was to break American law, and Judge Curiel awards him a scholarship — for law school!

In a blink Ryan and McConnell have shown exactly why Donald Trump has blown away the Republican Establishment in the GOP primary season. The GOP Establishment has lay down with the flea-infected mangy old political dog of racism — a left wing dependable from the days when Democratic Party co-founders Jefferson and Jackson allied the new-born party with slave owners. Later to turn into a permanent racial party appealing to every race-centered group from segregationists to Al Sharpton and today’s Black Lives Matter, not to mention various “La Raza” oriented groups of varying pedigree. As the GOP Establishment takes it cues from the Left — hence the charge that GOP Establishment types are “Democrat-lite” or RINOS on issues ranging from the economy to social issues — so now are they mimicking the Left on race, signing on for the out-and-out racism of “identity politics.”

Take a look here to see just how this game of race and gender is played by leftist California judges — and Judge Curiel. (Hat tip: Attorney Mark Pulliam, who formerly practiced in San Diego and now calls Texas home.)

Recall that on his Senate Judiciary Committee form, Curiel said that he was a member of the “California Judges Association.” And back there a mere year ago in January of 2015, the California Judges Association was enthusiastically supportive of a decision from the California Supreme Court that ruled, as reported by Fox News, this:

California’s Supreme Court voted Friday to prohibit state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts on grounds that the group discriminates against gays. The court said its seven justices unanimously voted to heed a recommendation by its ethics advisory committee barring judges’ affiliation with the organization.

Got that? It’s OK for Judge Curiel and a small army of California judges and lawyers to belong to the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association — a group openly discriminating against non-Latinos — but it’s not OK for a California judge to belong to the Boy Scouts — the Boy Scouts! — because “the group discriminates against gays.”

It doesn’t get more racist than that.

Let’s be blunt. There’s no room for identity politics in the party of Lincoln. The fact that Paul Ryan (Paul Ryan!) and Mitch McConnell would stand up and defend outright race-driven politics is utterly disgraceful.

Here, to refresh, is Abraham Lincoln himself on the subject of race. Lincoln, as noted in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, said he hoped to “‘penetrate the human soul’ until…‘all this quibbling about this man and the other man — this race and that race and the other race being inferior’” was gone from America. In more recent times, there is President John F. Kennedy telling the nation in his televised address over the racial turmoil in 1963 Birmingham, Alabama that “race has no place in American life or law.” And so it doesn’t.

Now today’s GOP Establishment, led by Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell, are saying that Donald Trump, a defendant in the rigged trial that is the witch hunt for Trump University, must be quiet about this insistent racialization of the federal bench and the law itself. Trump is being told that now that he is the soon-to-be heir to the leadership of Lincoln’s party he must sign on to the idea that it’s perfectly OK to insist that race has a decided priority in both American life and law and that he, Donald Trump, as a defendant has no right to call attention to something that left-wing racial advocates boast of freely. Recall that when it came to light that then Supreme Court Obama-nominee Sonia Sotomayor was found to be saying in speeches that a “wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male,” leftist were thrilled.

Now? Donald Trump is calling out this flat-out racism by targeting a judge for what might be called the judge’s “wise Latino” ways? Suddenly the GOP Establishment is attacking —Trump?

This is shameful. But totally in character for the GOP Leadership in Congress that long ago abandoned principle for political correctness.

Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell should be embarrassed.

More to come on the rigged case against Trump University.