Since the Donald Trump campaign kicked off with demagoguery about Mexican immigration, political watchers have been on quiet but alert fascism watch, carefully monitoring Trump to see if he steps over the line. You can feel in your bones that Trump and his supporters long for to give into the sweet oblivion of balls-out racism, rather than dealing with the tedious process of carefully measuring the lines so you can toe them without stepping so far over that liberal journalists are freed up to use the F-word.
For whatever reason, however, Trump just went there this past week, making headlines for agreeing with the Nazi-reminiscient idea of having a database to keep track of Muslims, which meant that it was game on for liberal journalists to say “fascism.” Now other Republicans are pouncing, denouncing Trump for this registry idea, portraying themselves as champions of the American ideal because they don’t draw comparisons to dictators past. And therein lies the real danger that Trump’s turn to the more belligerent represents: Not that he’ll win the Republican nomination (though that is always a danger), but that he is making all of his competitors look moderate in comparison. As long as Trump keeps lowering the bar, other Republicans can wallow in all sorts of grotesque behavior, knowing that they still look pretty good in comparison.