Civil rights icon and Georgia Democratic Rep. [crscore]John Lewis[/crscore] doubled down on his comparison of Donald Trump to George Wallace over the weekend, launching a rather demagogic attack on the GOP front-runner as he accused him of demagoguery.
This was the second time in just four days Lewis served up the Wallace analogy.
Little steps for little feet: George Wallace was a segregationist. Donald Trump is not. Lumping them together is a slick way to call Trump a racist without using the word.
In a little noticed interview with the Los Angeles Times Lewis said, “I’ve been around a while and Trump reminds me so much of a lot of the things that George Wallace said and did. I think demagogues are pretty dangerous, really [and] we shouldn’t divide people, we shouldn’t separate people.”
“Sometimes I feel like I am reliving part of my past. I heard it so much growing up in the South,” he continued. “I heard it so much during the days of the civil rights movement. As a people, I just think we could do much better.”
He heard what exactly? That Mexican immigrants are criminals? Or the United States should bar Muslim immigration? Probably not.
The issues that Trump are raising have nothing to do with the segregation Lewis battled as a young man.
With his incessant comparisons of Trump to Wallace the congressman is stoking voters’ fears and prejudices and distorting history for political ends.
Most people call that kind of thing demagoguery.