Why Republicans can slam Islam with little political cost

American Muslims are a small voting bloc, so the 2016 presidential candidates see limited fallout from what they are saying, and get a boost from conservative donors. 

Some leading Republican presidential candidates seem to view Muslims as fair game for increasingly harsh words they might use with more caution against any other group of American voters for fear of the political cost. So far, that strategy is winning support from conservatives influential in picking the nominee.

Many Republicans are heartened by strong rhetoric addressing what they view as a threat to national security by Islam itself, analysts say. Because Muslims are a small voting bloc, the candidates see limited fallout from what they are saying in the campaign.

"I think this issue exists on its own island," said Steve Schmidt, a Republican political consultant who ran Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "It's highly unlikely to cause a political penalty, and there is no evidence that it has."

Since the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, GOP front-runner Donald Trump has said he wants to register all Muslims in the U.S. and surveil American mosques. He has repeated unsubstantiated claims that Muslim-Americans in New Jersey celebrated by the "thousands" when the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Donald Trump is already very well-known for being brash and outspoken and is appealing to a group of people — a minority of American voters, but a large minority — who seem to like that kind of tough talk," said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

Rival Ben Carson said ISIS operatives may be among Syrian refugees coming to the U.S., so that would be akin to exposing a neighborhood to a "rabid dog." Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, "I'd like for Barack Obama to resign if he's not going to protect America and instead protect the image of Islam."

Such statements appeal to Republicans who think Obama and Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, have not done enough to fight jihadis, Green said. The sentiment also plays well for evangelicals concerned about violence directed at Christians in the Middle East and angered about restrictions their missionaries face in predominantly Muslim countries.

"There's a religious undercurrent here, aside from foreign policy issues," Green said.

Other inflammatory rhetoric from the Trump and Carson campaigns has generated far different reactions.

When Trump announced his campaign, he said Mexican immigrants are "bringing crime. They're rapists." He was widely denounced. Polls find Latinos strongly disapprove of his candidacy and his remarks alienated other immigrant groups.

The potency of comments criticizing Muslims was apparent even before recent attacks by extremists in France, Lebanon and Egypt.

Carson's campaign reported strong fundraising and more than 100,000 new Facebook friends in the 24 hours after he told NBC's "Meet the Press" in September, "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation."

Campaign manager Barry Bennett told The Associated Press, "While the left wing is huffing and puffing over it, Republican primary voters are with us at least 80-20."

"People in Iowa particularly, are like, 'Yeah! We're not going to vote for a Muslim either," Bennett said at the time. "I don't mind the hubbub. It's not hurting us, that's for sure."

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, Republicans view Muslims more negatively than they do any other religious group, and significantly worse than do Democrats.

Muslim voters aren't too keen on the GOP either. As for American Muslims, they aren’t feeling much warmth from the GOP, reports Pew.

A separate,2011 survey found that 15% of Muslims said that they see the Republican Party as friendly toward their community while 48% said they are unfriendly. By contrast, 46% of Muslims said the Democratic Party is friendly toward them and only 7% said they are unfriendly.

A different Pew poll last year found that 82 percent of Republicans were "very concerned" about the rise of Islamic extremism, compared with 51 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independents.

Today, 84 percent of Republicans disapprove of taking in Syrian refugees, most of whom are Muslims, compared with 40 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents, according to a Gallup poll released just before Thanksgiving.

In recent years, Americans' attitudes toward Islam and Muslims have been relatively stable following terrorist attacks. But opposition jumped in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and around major elections. To Dalia Mogahed, research director for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and former executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, those are signs that "the public was being manipulated" by politicians with agendas.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, when President George W. Bush visited a Washington mosque and said "Islam is peace," public opinion of the faith actually improved, she said. But the absence of such a leader has created a clear path for candidates who oppose Islam.

"They've now latched onto Muslims as an easy target with no consequences," Mogahed said. "We've really moved the threshold of what is socially acceptable."

Singling out Muslims is not new.

Before the 2012 presidential election, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich called for a federal ban on Islamic law and said Muslims could hold public office in the U.S. if "the person would commit in public to give up Shariah." Huckabee, then considering a presidential run, called Islam "the antithesis of the gospel of Christ."

But candidates at the top of the field stayed away from such rhetoric.

"The kind of things that Donald Trump and Ben Carson are saying today are things that Mitt Romney would have never said," said Farid Senzai, a political scientist at Santa Clara University. Romney was the Republican nominee in 2012.

Criticism of Muslims is hardly limited to presidential campaigns. In recent years, there have been ads by anti-Muslim groups and well-organized campaigns against the building of mosques, along with pressure on state legislatures to ban Shariah law.

"All of these things — built up over more than a decade by a few very vocal people — have created a climate in which it is not just acceptable for politicians to play to our basest instincts, but perhaps politically expedient," Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an email.

The intensity of the rhetoric is partly a symptom of the large field of GOP candidates, all trying to stake out ground to prove themselves as the most patriotic and toughest on national security, said Charles Dunn, former dean of the school of government at Regent University, which was founded by Pat Robertson, an evangelist and one-time GOP presidential candidate.

"The tone is much more strident now, much less forgiving," Dunn said.

American Muslims make up just under 1 percent of the U.S. population, Pew estimates. They come from many different backgrounds and are widely dispersed, limiting their political influence, Green said.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council, a policy and advocacy group based in Los Angeles, sent letters in October to all the presidential candidates asking them to attend the organization's public policy forum. The candidates either did not respond or declined, council spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed said.

"Over the last 10 years, the political and civic organizations for U.S. Muslims have become much better organized, but I think their voice is still fairly muted," Green said.

Even so, some observers say the verbal attacks risk alienating larger segments of voters, particularly other immigrants worried they could be next.

Suhail Khan, who worked in a number of posts in George W. Bush's administration and has decried criticism by Republican politicians of fellow Muslims, said: "There's no doubt that when specific candidates, in this case Dr. Carson and Mr. Trump, think that they can narrowly attack one specific group, other Americans of various faiths and backgrounds are paying attention."