“What the president is doing is, we are tired — sick and tired — of many people in this country. Forget these four. They represent a dark underbelly of people in this country of people who are not respecting our troops, are not giving them the resources and the respect that they deserve.”—Kellyanne Conway on Fox News (video at link)

As Donald Trump’s undisguised racist attack on the four Democratic Congresswomen known as ‘the squad‘ continued to dominate the news cycle for another day, it has become clear that this represents a central theme in the President’s 2020 campaign.

Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign manager, has been telling people that it is very hard to persuade voters in the current hyperpartisan political landscape.

Mr. Trump’s re-election strategy, instead, is to solidify his base and increase turnout. A major component of that is to portray his opponents as not merely disliking him and his policies, but also disliking America itself.

The strategy is reminiscent of how President Richard M. Nixon and the Republican Party tried to frame their fight with Democrats during the 1972 elections around questions of patriotism and loyalty. Nixon supporters took to using the slogan “America: Love It or Leave It” to cast the Democrats and the growing opposition to the Vietnam War as anti-American — not merely anti-Nixon or anti-Republican.

Pat Buchanan, the populist, conservative former presidential candidate who served as an aide to Nixon, said that by elevating the four, Mr. Trump is trying to set the terms of his re-election fight.

“Rather than let Democrats in the primaries choose his adversary, Trump is seeking to make the selection himself,” Mr. Buchanan said. And if the election is seen as a choice between Democrats like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Omar, Mr. Buchanan added, “Trump wins.”

Two reporters at the Washington Post cataloged Congressional Republicans’ reactions to Trump’s tirades. The results (as of July 16 at 8:12 p.m.):  

• 18 condemned Trump’s remarks;
• 42 criticized both Democrats and Trump;
• 29 supported Trump’s remarks; while
• 161 did not comment, dodged the question, or made vague statements that couldn’t be characterized as either criticism or support.

Yesterday 4 Republicans (and Independent Justin Amash) joined all 235 Democrats in voting to condemn Trump’s racist remarks. (A handful of Republican Congressmen voted against the resolution, after earlier condemning the President’s remarks.)

Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report noted that “Democrats represent 54% of all House districts but 95% (!) of the 100 districts with the highest shares of foreign-born residents,” while “Republicans represent 83% of the 100 districts with the highest shares of native-born residents ….”

“New Poll: The Rasmussen Poll, one of the most accurate in predicting the 2016 Election, has just announced that “Trump” numbers have recently gone up by four points, to 50%. Thank you to the vicious young Socialist Congresswomen. America will never buy your act!“—Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump

Will this be a winning strategy for Trump? It was in 2016. It wasn’t in 2018. Time will tell. According to Pew Research Center, the partisan gap in views of immigration is as wide as at any point in 25 years (chart at link). The question is, who will turn out to vote?