Birtherism’s race-based legitimacy attack won half of Republicans

Evidence

His choice of birtherism as his central issue was revealing. While most mainstream Republicans focused their criticisms of Obama on policy, Trump dove straight into racial politics, questioning Obama’s legitimacy as an American and, by extension, as president. The message resonated: Soon, half of Republicans believed this baseless conspiracy. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 422

Categorization

• XREF: Correlates with the ‘blank space’ thesis — a politics of pure oppositional identity that signals nothing about substance; relevant to reader’s counter-case about the era’s signature.