Here's the thing. The GOP does not like racists.
However, the GOP needs racists.
Until now, it has always been dog-whistles. We'll stop illegal immigration, because that's a crime. Crime is bad, I'm not saying blacks are bad, but crime is bad, and you can fill in the blacks, I mean blanks. We'll take down the terrorists over there, the islamists, the radical ones. You know the ones I mean. If you see something, say something. Fuck Obama.
Trump is just putting it all out there. He is giving verbiage to what has always been left unsaid. What are the low-income, angry-at-the-world voters going to do, vote Democrat? They are a reliable GOP voting bloc and have been promised every election that NEXT TIME is when the GOP will fix their problems. You know, illegals, crime, islamists, Obama.
The problem is the greater electorate needs plausible deniability on this. They need to think the Republicans are not actively courting racists. So Trump is kind of opening the door to the secret meeting and saying "You guys won't believe what's in here!" and that's really, really bad for the GOP. Because now they can't admit they're courting racists and they can't repudiate the white supremenationalist candidate, so they're stuck taking his balls in their face while being unable to do anything about it.
