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It should be obvious by now that Republican candidates for public office are uneasy talking about race, ethnicity and gender. But even by that standard, Jeb Bush and Donald Trump plummeted to some pretty disturbing new lows this week.

Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, told an audience in Iowa on Tuesday that voters ought to forget about tiny little things like “race and ethnicity and income.” And he attacked two people who he said were trying to scare and divide Americans – Mr. Trump and, incredibly, President Obama.

“There are people that prey on people’s fears and angst as well,” Mr. Bush said. “Whether it’s Donald Trump or Barack Obama, their rhetoric of divisiveness is wrong.”

Give Mr. Bush his point about Donald Trump. His continuing racist rants about Mexico are offensive. His claim on “Morning Joe” today that Hispanics will vote for him because he employs a lot of them was beyond laughable.

“The Hispanics love me,” Mr. Trump said at one point – a phrase that Charles Blow pointed out in an Op-Ed column in 2011 is the worst kind of phony racial pandering. Charles recalled Lauryn Hill’s memorable line that “men who lack conscience will even lie to themselves.”

But comparing Mr. Trump to Mr. Obama and claiming that the president has been trying to scare and divide Americans is simply disgraceful. Pointing out that there are still racial tensions, that black Americans suffer violence at the hands of the police and of civilian racists and are treated unjustly by the justice system is only divisive if you refuse to recognize those obvious facts.

Telling the world, for example, that Trayvon Martin looked like the son he might have had was not an act of racial divisiveness on Mr. Obama’s part — unless you reject the idea that an African American president is allowed to act like an African American president every now and then. White presidents don’t get faulted for acting like white people, after all.

What was striking about Mr. Obama’s appearance recently at the memorial service for the shooting victims in Charleston was that the United States finally has an African American president who could go to a place like that and credibly join in the mourning for nine people shot down by a racist.

All Mr. Bush managed to do by comparing President Obama to Donald Trump was to give voters another sign that he is out of touch with American reality, and has nothing terribly meaningful to say.

Mr. Bush also said: “A Republican will never win by striking fear in people’s hearts. A Republican can win and will win if we have an aspirational message that gives people hope that their lives will be better when we apply conservative principles the right way.”

That was kind of hilarious, especially when you consider that Republicans have been running on fear for decades. His father’s campaigns in 1988 and 1992 played shamelessly on societal, racial, religious and ethnic fears. George W. Bush called himself a “uniter not a divider” in the 2000 campaign, but also preyed on fear as a way of moving public opinion and votes. He waved the bloody shirt of the 9/11 attacks at every opportunity, especially in his re-election campaign.

I don’t blame Jeb Bush for being very annoyed by the fact that Donald Trump is doing so well in the polls because of name recognition, huge press attention and the red meat he keeps throwing to the fringe, intolerant right. But he only hurts himself with the broad American electorate with the kind of nonsense he tossed around at that event in Iowa.