An interesting article in The New Republic tries to explain why Republicans are afraid of attacking racial preferences even though polls reveal that the public, including minorities, increasingly oppose them by substantial margins.
Unless I missed something, the argument seems to be that opinion elites have successfully spun the issue so that opposition to preferences (which wherever possible is always called affirmative action, never preferences) opposition to them is thought to be a defining feature of “the knuckle-dragging right.” Thus Republicans are afraid to attack preferences, even though few like them, because they’ll be called mean and nasty.
