DONALD'S BASE:

[N]ew research from the University of Alabama's George Hawley, published by UVA's Institute for Family Studies, suggests this isn't the case. According to Hawley, a political scientist who specializes in demography and the far right, roughly 5.64 percent of America's 198 million non-Hispanic whites have beliefs consistent with the alt-right's worldview. Whether or not they would describe themselves as alt-right, Hawley argues, they share the movement's belief in a politics that promotes white interests above those of other racial groups.

[W]hile the alt-right as a practical political movement is marginal, Hawley's research shows that its ideas are more popular than it might seem. Large numbers of people think the way that they do, and shape their political identity around a sense of white grievance and identity. They may not march around the streets yelling, "Jews will not replace us!" but they are extremely receptive to a politics that positions whites as victims and a growing minority population as an existential threat.

This kind of white identity politics has become more and more common in the mainstream conservative movement since Trump's ascendancy. Just this week, Fox News host Laura Ingraham went on an anti-immigration rant that could just as easily been given by alt-right luminary Richard Spencer. Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke even tweeted out his endorsement of Ingraham's monologue.

"The America we know and love doesn't exist anymore," Ingraham said during her Wednesday night show. "Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like."

You can find similar rhetoric from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whom the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer has referred to as "literally our greatest ally." Rep. Steve King, a prominent anti-immigration Republican from Iowa, tweeted last year that "we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies"; the Daily Stormer has termed King "our guy."

These mainstream figures are activating this latent alt-right constituency, bringing them into the conservative movement and the Republican Party as a core constituency. And nobody has done this more effectively than President Donald Trump: Study after study has shown that Trump's primary and general election victories were driven by the racial resentment and demographic panic he activated among white voters.

Tweet   @brothersjudd