I expect a paper to at least facially address potential confounding aspects, which the paper does, just not this (to me obvious) one. The issue as I see it is

I expect a paper to at least facially address potential confounding aspects, which the paper does, just not this (to me obvious) one. The issue as I see it is that this supposes there's a selective group of people setting an arbitrary agenda, whereas the reality is closer to the idea that the majority of Americans are expressing this point of view and these specific politicians are repeating it. They're committing the very sin they're trying to study, dividing the point of view into a class-based one, by claiming it's the "elites" holding the viewpoint, and not the people themselves. I would scrub the word "elite" from the paper, it creates needless tension and isn't accurate (or at the very least, define the term specifically). Additionally, I'd directly address the idea that these results could be confounded by latent racism, and I'd probably do that by introducing the concept in the introduction, and refer back to it in the conclusion. In other words, "Future research should investigate the causal mechanisms behind this." is not enough. Maybe end with this, but do more.