Jonathan Alter: Paul Ryan, Republicans Using ‘Code Words’ To Echo Cliven Bundy

FARROW: "Should they have known, should they have done more background checking on this individual?"
ALTER: "Well, they just need to understand that the core of these resistors is a racist, basically there a racist idea that somehow people are feeding at the public trough, that somehow those people sitting on their porches and not working."
FARROE: "That's right."
ALTER: "So the dog whistle, sometimes called code words -- if you say as Paul Ryan has, for instance, the problem is the safety net has turned into a hammock, quote, unquote, Paul Ryan. What is he saying? What is he saying? What he is saying is that lazy, presumably minorities, are taking -- are takers from the federal government. Just like the 47 percent comments you heard from Mitt Romney. So is that -- are Romney and Ryan racist? No. But there was a subtext there that can be interpreted as making a racial appeal. What somebody as crudely racist as Bundy does is he strips the veneer and he shows that these other Republicans are basically just using code words to say the same thing, to make the same points."
FARROW: "And there's irony imbedded in all the comments, right? Because Bundy is making them in front of a federally funded overpass that I'm sure he uses to transport things. He is, as you pointed out, congressman, making these comments under the protection of the First Amendment, something that you need a federal government to enforce."
ELLISON: "That's right."