Spokane Republicans recently cozied up to James Allsup, a right-wing, anti-Semitic, white supremacist who professes a desire to embed his ideology in the Republican mainstream. I suppose this is one way of accommodating the call for a bigger Republican tent.

But, really, how do you explain a major party’s overt flirtation with racism a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act and the long and continuing struggle to eliminate racial hatred from American society?

Does anyone doubt that the Trump phenomenon has created political and cultural conditions that embolden mainstream political operatives to embrace bigotry and play to people’s most ignoble fears?

George A. Critchlow

Spokane Valley