I am writing in response to David Reel’s opinion piece in the September 25th Spy. I understand that appropriately the Spy leaves the content of the writer’s byline to the writer. It would be helpful if David Reel would not be so shy about his Republican Party bona fides as the past Chairman of the Talbot County Republican Central Committee.
This OpEd is characteristic of what I call the post 2016 American Enterprise sandwich. The American Enterprise Institute is the longtime conservative redoubt that has employed the likes of Newt Gingrich and Dinesh D’Souza.
In off year elections, the party not in the White House characteristically does very, very well. In 2016, the Republican Party let their extreme Donald Trump flag fly with disappointing results including the continuing speaker of the house fiasco and legislative stalemate because of the Republican Party’s slimmest of majorities.
The American Enterprise sandwich is a way for the conservative fringe to further itself with the veneer of non-combative moderation. The sandwich opens with a seemingly nonpartisan theme, in this case challenges and opportunities for Democrats and Republicans in addressing the African American electorate.
The meat follows with opinion and statistics which are negative for the Democratic Party. The final section contains platitudes about listening to the electorate.
Any piece dealing with how the Republican Party relates to the African American electorate that does not include the nationwide voter suppression efforts targeting that community cannot be taken seriously.
In the case of David Reel’s OpEd, it is not only in the style of the American Enterprise sandwich, but all the opinion is from American Enterprise staff and all the data is from American Enterprise surveys.
Be on the look out for this type of opinion piece and remember that Donald Trump is overwhelmingly favored to be the presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2024. Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy and any attempts to distract from that reality should be ignored.
Holly Wright
Talbot County
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