gracchusdixit

In the messy and unpredictable world of American politics, few moments can be called decisive—when the electoral fate of a candidate, a political party, or an entire political ideology are changed irrevocably in front of our eyes.  Such a moment occurred in the run-up to the last Presidential election, when Mitt Romney chose a closed-door and supposedly secret dinner with big-money donors to deride 47 percent of the country as worthless “takers” dependent for their livelihoods on hand-outs from big government.  When that dismissive slur leaked out, Romney’s chances came to an abrupt end.

Another, more public and far more decisive moment occurred earlier this week, during a press conference held by Donald Trump in Iowa.  It came when Trump tried to ignore and then silence a reporter named Jorge Ramos, and when all that failed, ordered him to be physically escorted from the room like some sort of common criminal.

Ramos wasn’t a mischievous heckler or a disruptive activist, let alone a criminal.  He was a journalist. Many observers in the mainstream media described him as an “award-winning reporter”—which he most certainly is.  But Jorge Ramos is a good deal more than that.  He is the anchor of the flagship newscast of Univision, the country’s dominant Spanish-language television network, where he has covered the issue of immigration more thoroughly—and more thoughtfully—than anyone else on television.  In doing so, he has become the symbolic champion of every immigrant, Hispanic or otherwise, who came to the United States, hoping for opportunity and a better life.

One of the more percipient observers of the confrontation in Iowa went so far as to describe Ramos as a combination of Anderson Cooper and Walter Cronkite.  But even that comparison is an understatement.  Jorge Ramos is—by far—the most popular and influential television journalist in the country and quite possibly in the history of the television news business.  His viewership at Univision dwarfs the audiences for the national newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC as well as the audiences that slavishly follow Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and the other conservative cheerleaders at Fox News Channel.  It is impossible to overstate the regard in which he is held by Hispanic Americans in general and Mexican Americans in particular.  Thus, it is impossible to overstate the damage that Donald Trump has done to himself and to the party he so recently embraced.

Everything about Trump’s behavior—his tone, his words, even the contemptuous scowl on his face—was offensive, crude and insulting.  It revealed, once and for all, the dismissive racism of his opinions and of those who support those opinions so enthusiastically.  It has been said, not least by the party itself, that Republicans cannot hope to win another national election without at least thirty percent of the Hispanic vote.  The last Republican Presidential candidate to do that was George W. Bush, eleven years ago.  Any hope of Republicans doing so again evaporated Tuesday.

There are those who say that Trump has no real chance of becoming the Republican nominee, but in truth, that no longer matters.  If he is rewarded for his treatment of Jorge Ramos with favorable polling results by the party’s rabid anti-immigrant “base”—which seems altogether likely—he will brag and boast and declare himself to have been vindicated.  Even candidates who may be tempted to oppose him, like Jeb Bush, can only go so far without jeopardizing their own hopes for winning the nomination.  Trump is calling the tune, and no amount of fancy footwork by other candidates can any longer change it.

Everything Trump has done in the wake of his confrontation with Ramos—calling him a “screamer” and a “madman,” among many other epithets—has merely served to dig the hole deeper.  Before the debacle in Iowa, there was a slight chance that a moderate candidate might somehow persuade Hispanics to vote Republican.  Even that slight chance is gone.

Of course, something else might occur to change all this.  After two years of wasting several million dollars of the public’s money, the Republican committee investigating “Bhengazi” may actually come up with something.  An indifferent electorate may eventually stir itself to care just a bit about the faux scandal of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.  Or the earth may stop revolving around the sun.  In the world of politics, the unexpected can, and sometimes does, happen.

What Donald Trump has done, however, cannot be undone.  For the 50 million Americans of Hispanic heritage, the face of the Republican Party is now the face of Donald Trump. They will not soon forget how he treated the one public figure they respect more than anyone else.  They will not forget how he treated Jorge Ramos.  Nor should anyone else.