Donald Trump reveals the GOP playbook on terrorism and most other things.

Trump’s tendency to cheapen everything he touches, like a King Midas of debauchery, has forced us to confront darker facets of the national psyche, sometimes in uncomfortable and even unhealthy ways. 

But he has also done America a favor by turning the subtext of Republican politics into text.  

This is ghoulish and macabre but in a way it’s remarkable that it has the power to shock at all, because it’s little different from run-of-the-mill GOP exploitation of post-9/11 panic, the attacks in Benghazi, Paris, San Bernardino, and on down the line. Trump simply makes explicit (that this kind of rhetoric is ultimately just pandering for votes) what other Republicans hope you won’t notice—and by doing so draws them out where we can see their true colors.