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Its hard to say whats a bigger taboo in American politics: being a racist, or calling someone one.

Sure, the Republican Party will occasionally try to distance itself from one of its more egregiously hateful members, like Representative Steve King of Iowa, who lost committee assignments after seeming to defend white nationalism. But mostly, right-wing politicians and their media allies pretend, to the point of farce, that the primary racial injustice in America involves white people unfairly accused of racism. This makes talking openly about the evident racism of our president harder than it should be.

To see how this works in microcosm, consider the House Oversight Committee hearing at which Donald Trumps former consigliere Michael Cohen testified on Wednesday. Cohen said, in his opening statement, that, in addition to being a con man and a cheat, Trump is a racist. This should be clear to all people of good faith, given that Trump was a leading figure in the birther movement, defended white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, and claimed he couldnt get a fair hearing from a judge of Mexican heritage, to mention just a few examples.

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But Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, strenuously objected to Cohens description, and came up with what he seemed to think was an airtight rejoinder. Meadows, who is white, had Lynne Patton, an African-American woman and longtime Trump employee now at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, stand behind him, and quoted her saying that she would not work for a racist. Checkmate!

In the past, one person who would often publicly vouch for Trumps non-racism was Omarosa Manigault Newman, the Apprentice-star-turned-White House aide. Then Manigault Newman came out with a book calling Trump a racist, a bigot and a misogynist. As part of her promotional tour for that book, she released an audio recording of a conversation she had with Patton and another African-American Trump supporter, Katrina Pierson, strategizing about how to handle the fallout should a tape surface of Trump using a racist slur. On the recording Patton, the person Meadows called upon as a character witness for the president, didnt seem doubtful that Trump could have said such a thing.

Many liberals were agog at this stunt by Meadows; on the left it's largely accepted that responding to charges of racism by pointing to black friends never mind black employees is clueless at best. Some white conservatives, however, seem convinced that you cant be racist if you have an affectionate relationship with a person of color. And so when Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, called out Meadows toward the end of the hearing, he was so aggrieved he nearly melted down.

The fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself, said Tlaib, who is Palestinian-American. Red-faced, indignant and seemingly on the verge of tears, Meadows demanded that Tlaibs words be stricken from the record, turned the charge of racism back on her, and said that he has nieces and nephews who are people of color. In a stunning dramatization of how racial dynamics determine whose emotions are honored, the hearing momentarily came to a halt so that Tlaib could assure Meadows that she didnt mean to call him a racist, and the committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, who is African-American, could comfort him. I could see and feel your pain, Cummings told him.

So Meadows emerged as the victim. There was, however, another twist. It turns out that in 2012, Meadows said some very racist things about Barack Obama, promising, on at least two occasions, to send the American president home to Kenya or wherever it is. As recordings of these comments ricocheted through the news, Meadows didnt quite apologize, but he did tell reporters that his words were not the way that I shouldve answered the questions. (In only one instance did he appear to be responding to a question.) I can tell you that anyone who knows me knows that there is not a racial bone in my body, he added.

I dont know Meadows, or what a racial bone is, but I suspect he may not be the best arbiter of what constitutes bigotry. Then again, when it comes to Trump, no arbiter is really needed. Why, after all, was Meadowss rediscovered birtherism so newsworthy, automatically understood as pertinent to a debate about his racism, or lack thereof? Because theres a mainstream assumption that it is racist to say that Obama secretly hails from Africa. This should, but somehow doesnt, translate into a mainstream assumption that Trump, who rode birther conspiracies to political prominence, is an unrepentant racist. He should be shunned as Steve King is shunned, but he cant be shunned because he is the president.

This contradiction is behind some of the madness of our public life right now. Normalizing Trump, which has become a central mission of the Republican Party, depends on denial about what racism is. Not for the first time, Tlaib got in trouble for pointing out the obvious the president is a bigot, and that in bringing out Patton to exonerate him, Meadows only demonstrated his own gross insensitivity.

On Thursday, Tlaib and Meadows reportedly had a warm conversation on the House floor; according to a CNN reporter, they hugged. Im glad; given how much shes been demonized in her short time in Congress, its probably in her interest to make Meadows feel better about their earlier exchange. Who knows, if shes friendly enough, maybe hell be able to cite their relationship next time hes caught saying something awful.

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Opinion | Republicans Race to the Bottom

Some Republican members of the House of Representatives joined Democrats on Thursday night to pass legislation that would fund the government and end the partial government shutdown if passed by the Senate and then signed by President Donald Trump.

House Joint Resolution 1 and House Resolution 21 neither of which includes funding for Trump's desired wall along the US-Mexico border were passed largely along party lines. All 234 members of the new Democratic majority voted in favor, while many GOP lawmakers voted against the measures, which were nearly identical to the Senate's stopgap measure passed in December ahead of the shutdown.

There were a handful of Republicans, however, who broke with Trump and voted with the Democrats. Trump has said he will not sign legislation to fund the government that doesn't contain $5 billion in funding for a border wall.

Five Republicans voted for H.J. Res. 1, which makes "further continuing appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2019, and for other purposes." (It would fund the DHS until February 8, according to the CNN reporter Manu Raju.)

Seven members of the GOP voted for H.R. 21, which makes "appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes," funding the other government agencies affected by the partial shutdown.

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Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and other Senate Republican leaders, Washington, D.C., Nov. 14, 2018.(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

What do women want? The political answer to Freud's famous question, judging by the midterm Republican wipeout, can be summed up in a word: Democrats.

The good news for Republicans is they now have women leading their national party and their Senate campaign committee, and Rep. Liz Cheney will soon bethe No. 3 Republican in the House.

The good news for Democrats is there'sno sign the GOP plans to make any substantive changes that could turn this "year of the Democratic woman" into some future year forwomen of both parties.

"We are doing great work for women, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said recently on CNN. We need to do a better job at communicating why we are the choice for women and encouraging women to run for elected office.

These were the right words after a midterm election that produced a record gender gapand dramatically shrank the ranks of Republican women in Congress.But Ernst then went on to say that of course, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is better for our families. We see more of them keeping that income in their own pockets.We see a lot of deregulation and companies that are able to expand and provide opportunities for women.

If she and other Republicans stick to this script and these policies, not to mention to this president, its hard to envision female votersfinding much to like. On almost every issue of the day, most women have different views and priorities than conservatives and Donald Trump.

Unpackingthat one CNN appearance by Ernst is instructive. First of all, exit polls last month show that mostRepublicans don't consider it important for women to run for office.Two-thirds of Democrats said it was important, compared with only one-third of Republicans.

In perhaps a self-fulfilling prophesy, Republicans elected very few women. Next year they'll drop from 23 women in the House to 13. Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith managed to keep her seat in last week'srunoff despite a campaign riddled with racial gaffes, but that still leaves the GOP with just seven women senators less than halfthe Democrats'17.

Ernst'sfocus on tax cuts, deregulation and private-sector opportunities does not seem helpful. The benefits of the tax-cut law, the GOP's major accomplishment, did not trickle down to many voters. In October, for instance, nearly two-thirds in a Gallup poll said they had not seen an increase in take-home pay, and half said the cuts had not helped them financially.

As for businesses expanding and providing opportunities for women, one study found that the nation's 1,000 largest public companiesreduced employment after the tax cuts passed. The corporate gains from the law have largely benefited shareholders through rising buybacks and dividends, The New York Times reported. They're expected to beup 28 percent this year over 2017, compared with 0.5 percent growth in wages over 2017.

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A Quinnipiac Poll in July illustratedthe gulf between women and the GOP.Only 7 percent of women named taxes as their top election issue. But 14 percent chose gun policy, 24 percent chose health care and, perhaps because the poll was taken at the time family separations were in the news, 29 percent chose immigration. Most women disagree with Trump, the GOP or both on those issues.

There's no ignoring the Trump drag, of course.In thatsame poll, 43 percent of women said their vote would be meant to express opposition to Trump (only 22 percent said it would be a show of support).Women do not like his behavior, his character or his policies.

In July, two-thirds of women disapproved of Trump's immigration policies.OnElection Day, 55 percent of women said Trumps immigration policies were too tough. As for trade, half of women judged Trumps policies bad for their personal financesand even more, 56 percent, said they are bad for the economy.

Then there's Trump's treatment of women who accuse men of sexual misconduct. After the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle centered on Christine Blasey Ford's testimony that he had sexually assaulted her inhigh school, Trump defended his Supreme Court nomineeand said it was a scary time for men. But in a poll later that month, only 36 percent of women said the #MeToo movement had gone too far.

This type of behavior won't be in the spotlight, one hopes, when Trump is no longer president. Likewise, his views on immigration and trade depart from traditional Republican positionsand could fade with time. But what about thepolicies Republicanshave been pushing for decades, many of them since Ronald Reagan was commander in chief?

After the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, a frequent swing vote on cultural issues and author of the decision legalizing gay marriage, only a quarter of women (but 68 percent of Republicans) said they wanted a more conservative Supreme Court. Seven in 10 women support stricter gun laws(more than twice the share of GOP). More than half (54 percent)worry about global warming and think human activity causes it (most Republicans say it's exaggerated).Six in 10 women say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while six in 10 Republicans say the opposite.Andin a poll last month, health care was the issue that mattered most to 28 percent of women but only 14 percent of Republicans.

These are disconnects that will not go away with Trump. They will not be fixed by having a few women in high party positions. They will not be fixed if, as defeated Utah Rep. Mia Love put it,Republicans "actually let people know that we care. They will be fixed if and when Republicans recognize that better communicatingwithout better ideas is no change at all.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of"The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock."Follow her on Twitter:@JillDLawrence

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Nine members of the far-right Proud Boys group and three protesters are facing riot and assault charges after a street brawl between them Friday night in New York.

The fight wasnt a random clash, though: The Proud Boys were in Manhattan thanks to an invite from the Metropolitan Republican Club.

In a speech at the club, which was vandalized before the event, Proud Boys leader Gavin McInnes waved a sword at anti-fascist protesters and celebrated the assassination of a socialist Japanese politician. McInnes, a Vice co-founder who left the company in 2008, dressed up as the Japanese assassin who killed the politician, complete with glasses that made his eyes into a racist caricature of a Japanese persons eyes.

It was a bizarre event to host at the GOPs Manhattan clubhouse, but the Metropolitan Republican Club defended McInnes and the Proud Boys after the fight. In a statement released Sunday, the club said McInnes speech was certainly not inciting violence.

The Republican clubs role hosting the event highlights how the Proud Boys have managed to insinuate themselves with mainstream Republicans, even as they increasingly make the news for their violence. But the New York Republicans arent alonethe Proud Boys have already managed to make their way into other mainstream GOP campaign events and conservative media.

Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Devin Nunes have posed for pictures with Proud Boys on the campaign trail. Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson posed in a Fox green room with two Proud Boys and Republican operative Roger Stone earlier this year.

The skinheads, for example, would become functional equivalents of Hitlers SA and Mussolinis squadristi only if they aroused support instead of revulsion.

Historian Robert Paxton

Stone has himself taken steps to be initiated into the Proud Boys and made headlines in March, when he used the Proud Boys as a security force at the Dorchester Conference, a Republican event in Oregon. By then, the Proud Boys were already notorious in Oregon for a series of bloody Portland brawls. But Dorchester board member and former Oregon legislator Patrick Sheehan defended the Proud Boys attendance, telling Willamette Week that Stone was worried about getting killed He gets death threats constantly.

Stone told The Daily Beast that the Proud Boys were a volunteer force.

Stone said via email he never hired the Proud Boys, only that individual members have volunteered to provide security because of the large number of death threats I have received and they many potentially violent and physical attacks on me in public spaces when I travel.

Stone said the Proud Boys also acted as his security force at the Mother of All Rallies, a right-wing event in D.C. this year. He said hed been in touch with individual Proud Boys for more than a year, and that he tried talking some out of attending the first Unite the Right rally. I urged a number of individual proudboys [sic] I know NOT to go to Charlottesville because of the stated views of some of the online organizers, he said.

Fascist skinhead groups have wreaked havoc in the U.S. for decades, but scholars of fascism have noted that those groups pose limited political threatsunless a mainstream political party embraces them.

The skinheads, for example, would become functional equivalents of Hitlers SA and Mussolinis squadristi only if they aroused support instead of revulsion, historian Robert Paxton writes in his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism. If important elements of the conservative elite begin to cultivate or even tolerate them as weapons against some internal enemy, such as immigrants, we are approaching Stage Two of what he identifies as fascist insurgency.

The Proud Boys, which have a paramilitary wing, have already proved willing to act as strongmen for Stone, and GOP stalwarts like the Metropolitan Republican Club have already proved willing to host the group.

The Proud Boys didnt start out with such a focus on political violence. While members of the group have always been beaten in while shouting the names of cereal brandsan initiation McInnes claims show they can keep their heads in a fightthe rules initially imposed by McInnes focused more on the Proud Boys reactionary drinking club lifestyle than baiting antifa at rallies.

But as clashes between pro-Trump protesters and left-wing antifa grabbed headlines in the summer of 2017, McInnes sought to play up violence as a part of the Proud Boy ethos. He invited notorious right-wing rally fighter Kyle Based Stickman Chapman to start a paramilitary wing of the Proud Boys, a now-defunct group called the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights.

McInnes also made a new achievement for Proud Boys: the fourth degree, designated for Proud Boys who had endured a major struggle for the cause. McInnes eventually had to issue a clarification that 4th degrees could only be given for actions taken in self-defense, writing he was worried that the new level was leading Proud Boys into senseless violence.

Despite the clarification, Proud Boy rhetoric also grew more belligerent, adopting mottoes like Fuck around and find out and Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Both lines are references to punching out antifa members in self-defense. But Proud Boys have also embraced references and clothing with references to helicopter rides, an allusion to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochets regime executing opponents by throwing them out of helicopters to fall to their deaths.

Several Proud Boys have since carved out their own social-media fame with viral-ready clashes against antifa protesters, becoming right-wing celebrities in their own right and booking appearances on far-right outlets like Infowars.

That attention has drawn even more would-be fighters to Proud Boy events, according to Keegan Hankes, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project. At this point, the violence surrounding the Proud Boy has become the groups life blood, according to Hankes.

Their DNA has totally mutated in the last year-and-a-half, and I think a lot of it has been because of the repeated recurrences of violence, Hankes said.

The frequent clashes between Proud Boys and left-wing protesters apparently havent damaged the Proud Boy brand enough to keep the group from gaining new members. While other groups further to the Proud Boys right have fractured, the Proud Boys appear to be growing, with members from United Kingdom and Australia posting beat-in videos on YouTube.

Gavin, smartly, is holding by his fingernails to legitimacy, Hankes said. He knows that the second they cross over into being recognized as extreme as they are in reality, its all decline from there.

Part of that ploy for legitimacy is disavowing the most extreme white-supremacist events, like Unite the Right. The event was organized by former Proud Boy Jason Kessler, and attended by other Proud Boys. Kessler even promoted the event in a friendly appearance on McInnes show.

McInnes disavowed the event shortly beforehand, and warned Proud Boys against attending in their uniforms. Just dont fucking wear your Fred Perry, or decide to belt: Proud of Your Boy, he said, in reference to the Fred Perry polo shirts the group wears, and the show tune its members have adopted.

But violence has erupted outside other, more conventionally Republican events, including a February 2017 event hosted by New York Universitys College Republicans club. Police arrested 11 people in brawls outside the NYU building. Among them was Proud Boy Salvatore Cipolla, who attacked a journalist who was covering the event. Cipolla attended Unite the Right later that year. During an on-camera interview at Unite the Right, Cipolla identified as a Proud Boy and showed off a Proud Boy tattoo.

Days after the event, he said that he was no longer affiliated with Mcinnes group. Just so everyone is clear I am no longer a proud boy, he tweeted. Although the reasons for his departure were unclear, he had violated McInnes rule against identifying as a Proud Boy at Unite the Right.

Jason Lee Van Dyke, a Proud Boy who also acts as the groups lawyer said the group has found welcome with a populist, pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party.

I think some Republicans appreciate the Proud Boys because they understand what we actually stand for: love of country, small government, freedom, and fun, he said. Van Dyke was suspended from his college over a firearms offense after which campus police found an anti-Semitic race-war book in his dorm. (After the publication of this article, Van Dyke told The Daily Beast the book was for a political theory class.) He was recently arrested for allegedly filing a false police report about the theft of his guns.

Republicans like President Trump campaigned on those values. However, the big government/neoconservative wing of the Republican Party has different values, and therefore, a different perspective.

The rift between Trumpist and traditional conservatives recently engulfed the Metropolitan Republican Club, where McInnes spoke on Friday. In early 2017, the New York Post reported that the clubs never Trump leadership was attempting to purge the clubs pro-Trump, far-right elements.

That older, anti-Trump faction appears to have lostat the Metropolitan Republican Club and elsewhere in the U.S., as more extreme-right elements take hold of the GOP.

The Metropolitan Republican Club recently hosted open Islamophobe Pamela Geller. A State of the Union watch party at the club in January descended into alt-right chaos, the Observer reported.

But the Proud Boys supporters in the GOP say theres nothing untoward about the groupat least not more so than mainstream Republicans.

For the record, I reject the charge that the group are white supremacists or bigots, Stone said. I would not associate with such people.

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Republicans Are Adopting the Proud Boys

A party official said lawmakers had chipped in $1.2 million for the House campaign committee after the appeal.

Among top Democrats, optimism has soared since Labor Day. Mr. Trump has handed them fodder via his Twitter provocations, and reports of deep internal divisions in his administration have added to a sense of a chaotic presidency hijacking the news cycle.

Party leaders have closely tracked their leads in several public polls: During a meeting of congressional Democratic leaders on Wednesday evening, a top aide to Ms. Pelosi walked the group through a list of five recent polls that found voters nationally favoring Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans by double-digit margins.

Officials with the main House Democratic super PAC, the House Majority PAC, said their polling in August showed 17 incumbent Republicans trailing and six tied nearly enough to recapture the majority without even factoring in the open seats the G.O.P. is defending. Strikingly, when the group this month surveyed some of the same districts where Republicans had unleashed a barrage of negative ads, it found that Democratic candidates had slipped only a little and that the races remained within the polling margin of error.

In the Senate, a mood of highly guarded hopefulness has spread among Democrats, who see a path to a majority that runs through a mix of right-leaning and solidly conservative states. By this point in the cycle, some in the party had feared that several incumbents would be headed to certain defeat, and once-inviting takeover opportunities would have slipped off the map, including in Tennessee and Texas. But both of those states remain competitive and a group of rust belt Senate Democrats, like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, seem secure.

Despite the difficulty of the maps geography, if theres a big wave I think our odds are very, very good, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said in an interview, adding that when youre feeling the wave in September it rarely changes much by November.

And the main reason Democrats are sensing a wave is obvious to party veterans.

He wont allow himself to get credit for the economy, said James Carville, the Democratic strategist, referring to President Trump. Mr. Carville, who fashioned Bill Clintons Its the economy, stupid mantra in 1992, continued: Hes made himself bigger than the economy. Every conversation starts and ends with Trump.

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The Economy Is Humming, but Trump Is Tweeting. Republicans ...