The ugly reality of racial politics in today’s Republican Party

To quote Bob Dylan — “How does it feel?”

The songwriter’s question goes to Vice President JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio. One of Ramaswamy’s Republican opponents for the nomination released a video asking “Hey, Vivek, you want to play Cowboys versus Indians?” before firing a gun.

The same rival, Casey Putsch, had called Ramaswamy an “anchor baby” because he was born to immigrants from India.

Hard to believe, but Ramaswamy has played similar racial politics. He has called for the end of birthright citizenship. And he once said he doesn’t believe there are any white supremacists. “Never seen one, I’ve never met one in my life,” he said.

Excusing racism and ignoring racism is now standard for Republicans running in the Trump era.

Vance is also having past episodes of closing his eyes to racism come back to bite him. As he positions himself for a possible 2028 presidential campaign, the ugliest factions inside the MAGA movement are already signaling that his wife’s racial heritage will be a liability for him.

Nick Fuentes, one of the most influential white nationalist streamers on the right, routinely mocks both Ramaswamy and Usha Vance with racial slurs targeting brown-skinned people with South Asian heritage. He refers to them as “jeets,” a slur roughly equal in venom to the n-word for Black Americans.

This kind of outright racism is not hard to find in a Trump party that is 80 percent white.

A December 2025 Manhattan Institute poll found that among Republicans under 50, a disturbingly large 31 percent said they openly express racist views, and 25 percent that they have expressed antisemitic views. 

Long gone are the days of Abraham Lincoln, Jacob Javitz and Everett Dirksen. In the old days,........

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