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Last time I talked about the Republican Party that produced Donald Trump. There is a lot more to say about it, but here I want to focus on one thing – Republican racism.

There is a reason Donald Trump never had to apologize or even disavow his “birther” racism before he got the Republican presidential nomination.

He knew it wouldn’t hurt his chances among Republican voters. That is how racist the Republican Party has become.

Racism is a blight on the history of our country. For it to be embraced by one of the two major political parties in the 21st century is a disgrace beyond words.

The roots of what has happened to Republicans go back to Richard Nixon’s 1968 “Southern strategy” of exploiting Southern racism to the Republican Party’s advantage.

That strategy opened the door for radical right wingers to join the Republican Party. They did, biding their time until the Tea Party rose up and took control, making racism mainstream in the process.

When South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson called President Obama a liar during the 2009 State of the Union address and days later his popularity went up, it was unmistakably clear that racism had come out of the Republican closet for the whole country to see.

Not one of Wilson’s Republican colleagues offered criticism of what he did, indicative of just how deeply embedded their racism was and why I called Republican obstructionism the legislative equivalent of “birtherism” in my last blog.

This is the context for the Republican refusal to consider Merrick Garland as President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. This is not about the Supreme Court. It is about President Obama making the appointment as is his rightful duty and responsibility.

Not in the eyes of Republicans. Their actions are a de facto declaration that this President’s last year in office doesn’t count, that as far as they are concerned he is president in name only.

Republicans justify what they are doing by claiming that they are only doing what Democrats have done in the past, but it is a lie of the first order and an damnable excuse for racism.

Never before has any political party ever adopted a legislative strategy to oppose everything a president wants to do simply because it is comes from him.

The fact that the president in question happens to be our nation’s first black president is not coincidental to what has been happening.

Just the opposite. It lies at the core of it. Since President Obama was elected, Republicans have not served as the “loyal opposition.” They have served as an instrument of racism that infects their party.

Because of the nature of this election, it is easy to focus on Donald Trump and ignore the racism in the Republican Party itself.

We cannot let that happen. Today’s Republican racism represents a re-emergence of the kind of political ugliness we saw in politicians like George Wallace that many of us thought had been removed from our public life.

We knew racism still existed, but we made ourselves believe it lived in the shadows and on the fringes.

We were wrong. It is now a primary force in today’s Republican Party, which explains why so many Republicans we know as friends, neighbors, church members, and even family members say they agree with political rhetoric that categorizes whole groups of people into suspects of crime and terrorism.

They even believe patrolling “Muslim neighborhoods” and setting up internment camps for immigrants from Islamic countries in order to vet them as potential terrorists rather than following the current vigorous vetting process is acceptable practice. “Unbelievable” is too mild a word for it.

Republican racism defends itself with the charge that when called out those doing the calling are “playing the race card.”

But let’s be absolutely clear. When the racism is real, it’s not playing the race card. It is naming the demon.

It is time for the rest of us to stop “playing nice” and tell the truth about what has happened to today’s Republican Party.