Open the tent to predators or their victims, but not both.

Embracing vile bigots and congratulating them for being a member of your party is sending a message, loud and clear, about who you don’t want in your party and whose support you don’t care about.

Either you can be a cause that panders to hatemongers or you can be a cause that promises to defend the rights of all persons. But you can’t have it both ways. There’s no happy middle ground between people asserting their humanity and those who want to deny it.

You can’t roll out the welcome wagon for cranks who say they want to stone gays to death, who push heinous racist pseudoscience, who bemoan women’s liberation as an anti-Christian plot that must be reversed, who embrace full-blown neonazis as friends and allies, who condemn migrants as invaders engaged in “forced integration,” and then turn around and act surprised
you’re not getting more support from women, gays, minorities, immigrants, and all people of good will who recoil from associating with such unmitigated evil.

It’s a binary choice. Pick one and own the consequences of that decision. But there’s no foot-in-both-camps splitting the middle. The only question is which side of that line you want to stand on.