Somewhere in a Chick Fil A in Manassas, VA, Reince Priebus and his assistant meet to debate electoral strategy for 2016.
"Alright so, every non white non evangelical under the age of 65 that resides in a place with a stoplight pretty much hates us. What can we use to instill fear in what remains our supporters this year to entice them to come in off the farm and vote. Ideas?"
"Well, we could scapegoat poor African Americans."
"An oldie but a goodie. Sadly, that didn't work out too well in 2008 or 2012, and it doesn't look like we're going to have a candidate who can make that message stick. Besides which, we don't need an overt message against African Americans, we've passed voting restrictions in three dozen states to keep undesirables away from the polls. What's next?"
"What about gays? We're good at scapegoating gays."
"True, that did get George W Bush "elected" to a second term. Unfortunately, millennials don't really like that tack and the Supreme Court took away all of our fun. What else do you have?"
"We could say Democrats are coming for their guns."
*Text Alert* Mass Shooting Kills Eight in Southern Ohio.
"Well, that's out."
"Anything else?"
"We could scare people with the Zika virus like we did with Ebola before the 2014 midterms."
It's a thought, but white people get Ebola, and the Zika virus impacts primary Hispanics, so there's no way we'll get any traction with that. File that away for 2018, though. It may come in handy.
"I have it. What about transgender people? They're a really small part of the population and most of our supporters find the idea of cross dressing and using different gendered bathrooms totally disgusting. We can totally spin it as a public safety issue."
"C'mon now, that's ridiculous. I mean, transgender bathroom assaults happen at the rate of less than ten per year, and the majority of those assaults are committed by people who have mental problems and aren't actually transgender. At the same time, the assault and murder rate of transgender people reached it's highest point ever. "
"And even if you could pass a law like this, how would you enforce it, have someone in every public bathroom there to do a genital check?"
"Well, to be fair, sir, it would stimulate the economy." Reince and his assistant elbow each other and chuckle uproariously.
"I mean, this idea is about as dumb as suggesting we could win an election by building a wall to keep out Mexicans. No one would believe it, and it would alienate us even further from the rest of society, if that's even possible."
"So shall I get Pat McCrory and Mike Pence on the phone?"
"Assuming they can take time out from figuring out how to prevent non white people from voting yes, ring them immediately. Get yourself a frosted lemonade on me. Brilliant!"
