A significant moment in the 2020 Presidential Campaign occurred this week with the release of the new book, HATE MONGER: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, authored by the award-winning San Diego journalist, Jean Guerrero.  This book is an in-depth revelation of the development and formulation of the White Nationalist, racist, and xenophobic agenda of Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to President Donald Trump.  The following is the link to the Washington Post review of this fine new tome.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/07/how-stephen-miller-went-teen-troll-trump-whisperer/

Miller continues to have more influence on Donald Trump than any other administration official.  From the day Trump entered the 2016 Presidential race, I have written column after column revealing Donald Trump’s deplorable lifetime record of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and misogyny.  It is hardly a mystery as to why Miller has found in Donald Trump such an enthusiastic audience for his agenda of hatred.  Indeed, the Miller hatred agenda has become the essential message of the Trump administration.

For me, the hatred agenda of Stephen Miller, a fellow American Jew, is particularly offensive.  If Stephen Miller wasn’t Jewish, he would make a perfect candidate for the National Ku Klux Klan Man of the Year Award.  He is a vile, despicable purveyor of racism, and he perfectly reflects what Donald Trump is all about.

I am also highly offended by the shameful failure of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), which styles itself as the official voice of Republicanism in the American Jewish Community, to repudiate both Miller and his message of ethnic hate and xenophobia.   Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire major benefactor of the RJC, should be reminded that Jackie Roosevelt Robinson, the ultimate American voice of racial tolerance and understanding, was a Republican.

I would add that the condemnation of Miller extends to members of his own extended family.  Read my column, “My Father, the Glossers, and Trump’s Suslov, Stephen Miller,” in which I note the denunciation of Miller by his uncle, David Glosser.

https://www.insidernj.com/father-glossers-trumps-suslov-stephen-miller/

Closer to home, however, the Miller influence has had a likely permanently damaging effect on the New Jersey Republican Party, which was a national Republican model of success during the 1980s, due to the Politics of Inclusion implemented by the then Republican governor, Tom Kean.

Tom Kean was much more than just the greatest governor of New Jersey during the 20th Century and the exquisitely successful Chair of the 9-11 Commission.  His mantra of “The Politics of Inclusion” was more than just a political slogan.  It was the methodology by which Tom Kean established an unsurpassed climate of ethnic and religious tolerance in New Jersey throughout his eight-year tenure as governor.

Tom Kean was so successful that he actually carried the African-American vote in his 1985 reelection.  Thirty years after he left the governorship, Tom Kean remains as New Jersey’s most popular political figure.

The Kean Politics of Inclusion, however, is nothing more than a distant memory for the New Jersey Republican Party, which has now been reduced to permanent minority status.  Today, the New Jersey Republican Party is the party of Stephen Miller, a political Jonestown, a vast wasteland where Trumpist Kool-Aid is imbibed by all.  The Trumpist Kool-Aid results in an enabling of Trumpian racism by the imbibers.

And there is no more a quintessential example of a non-racist who is an enabler of Trump racism than

the titular leader of the New Jersey Republican Party, Chris Christie.

I have made it clear in my columns that Chris Christie is not a racist.  In fact, his record as a public servant on racial issues, by and large, has been good, as I pointed out in a recent column:

https://www.insidernj.com/chris-christie-not-trumpian-enough-ever-win-gop-presidential-nomination/

The problem is, however, that Chris Christie is a man of irrepressible ambition who continues to thirst for the future Republican nomination for the presidency.  For that reason, he will unceasingly attempt to ingratiate himself with Trump and Trumpism and temporize with Trump racism, and he will never denounce Donald Trump and Stephen Miller for the racists they are.

In fact, Christie continues to deny that Donald Trump is a racist.  By denying that Donald Trump is a racist, Chris Christie becomes an enabler of Trump racism.

And in a recent interview with  Bob Costa of the Washington Post regarding his relationship with the Trump administration (https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2020/08/04/conversation-with-chris-christie/) Christie utters nary a word of criticism regarding Donald Trump’s in-house Charles Lindbergh and embodiment of White Nationalism, Stephen Miller.    And he goes a step further and effusively gives Miller credit as one of the five key players who made possible Trump’s 2016 victory.  By his praise of Stephen Miller and absence of repudiation, Chris Christie becomes an enabler of Stephen Miller racism.

The message of Stephen Miller is the message of Donald Trump, and therefore, the message of all the state Republican parties nationwide.  By enabling this message and refraining from repudiating it, Chris Christie, the titular leader of the New Jersey Republican Party has enabled the Stephen Miller message to become the message of the NJGOP.

And nobody has been more negatively impacted politically by the NJGOP Stephen Miller message than State Senator Tom Kean, Jr.

I have endorsed the reelection of all incumbent Democratic candidates for the US House of Representatives, with one exception:  In the Seventh Congressional District, I am endorsing the election of Republican Tom Kean, Jr. over Democratic incumbent Representative Tom Malinowski.

As I stated in a recent InsiderNJ.column (https://www.insidernj.com/can-tom-kean-jr-effectively-repudiate-trump-win-politics-inclusion/), my endorsement of Kean does not reflect any negative feeling on my part towards Tom Malinowski, per se.  Rather, it is a reflection of my profound reverence for the Kean family legacy of outstanding quality public service, characterized by unsurpassed emphasis on racial and ethnic tolerance.

Tom Kean, Jr. himself has established a record of legislative excellence as the leader of the Republican delegation in the New Jersey State Senate.  He has displayed superb issue insight, political acumen, and unassailable integrity.

In order to win, however, Kean will have to explicitly repudiate both Donald Trump, the racist President of the United States and champion of voter suppression and racist police brutality, and the formulator of the Trump message, Stephen Miller.  If he does not do so, Kean will lose.

The repudiation by Tom Kean, Jr. of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller will not only enable him to win the Seventh District Congressional District seat. It will be the first step in the New Jersey Republican Party emerging from the political Trumpian Jonestown that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller created and Chris Christie controls and maintains.

Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.