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“Republicans Still Pandering To Voters’ Worst Instincts”: Appealing To The Most Nativist Elements Of The Republican Base

Not so long ago, leaders of a chastened Republican Party issued a report urging a new way forward for a GOP spurned by voters of color. Following Mitt Romney’s unfortunate language about “self-deportation,” which likely contributed to his defeat, party strategists were especially concerned that the GOP find a way to reach out to Latinos, the fastest-growing voting bloc.

The report of the Growth and Opportunity Project urged the GOP not only to embrace comprehensive immigration reform but also to adopt a very different rhetoric in addressing Latinos, including those without documents. “If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence,” the report said.

Let’s just say the report’s recommendations haven’t been widely embraced by the 2016 Republican presidential field. Led by the odious Donald Trump, several candidates have raced to appeal to the most nativist elements of the Republican base.

That’s a train wreck for the Republican Party — a strategy that will not only make it difficult for the party to regain the White House in 2016, but which will also weaken it for decades to come. Latinos coming of age now are unlikely to forget the hostility shown by a GOP that can no longer be called the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Trump’s immigration policy — if it can be called that — doesn’t back away from his inflammatory rhetoric. He would build a wall, which he insists Mexico could be forced to pay for, and he’d deport the estimated 11 million immigrants who crossed the border illegally. But the proposal that has blasted through the primary field is this: He would end automatic citizenship for babies born to mothers without papers.

Not to be outdone, several of his rivals clambered aboard. Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson all echoed some degree of support. Ted Cruz elbowed in with the claim that it’s “a view I have long held.” Together with the candidates who have previously expressed their opposition to birthright citizenship, which is bestowed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, about half the field of 17 GOP presidential candidates agrees with Trump, according to Politico.

This is a minefield for a Republican Party already struggling to reach beyond its overwhelmingly white base. The 14th Amendment has deep historic resonance because it’s a post-Civil War amendment, intended to rectify the injustice of a constitutional system that did not extend citizenship to black people. It grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” And while it’s unlikely that any president could garner enough support to repeal that, the willingness of so many Republicans to bandy about the proposition can only remind more moderate voters that the party is a small and homogeneous tent.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Peter Wehner, a former official in the administration of George W. Bush, told Politico. “It’s a politically insane idea. It can’t be done. It’s impossible to achieve. So what’s the point? It’s symbolism, and it’s exactly the wrong kind of symbolism. If Republicans want to make this their symbol … they’ll pay a high price for it.”

As much as the Republican establishment has wished that Donald Trump would disappear, it ought to be quite clear to them by now that the problem isn’t The Donald. It’s the Trump phenomenon. And that’s a problem for which the establishment has only itself to blame.

For decades, otherwise clearheaded Republicans have stood by as their rising stars pandered to the worst instincts of the most conservative voters, especially those troubled by the social and cultural transformation wrought by the civil rights movement.

That Southern strategy has been modernized, refurbished and refreshed, but it has never been retired. Since the election of President Barack Obama, it has taken the form of skepticism about his citizenship, assaults on voting rights, and a braying and insulting nativism.

Trump simply came along to harvest the fruits of that destructive strategy. And what a harvest it is.

 

By: Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, August 22, 2015

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Donald Trump, GOP Presidential Candidates, Immigration Reform | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Team Jeb Adds Trump’s Sister To The Mix”: Jeb Bush And His Operation Are Sweating, And Everyone Can See It

At an event last month, former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton acknowledged their personal interest in the 2016 race, but sounded optimistic about the kind of campaign Americans could expect.

“I know Jeb and I’m confident Secretary Hillary will elevate the discourse,” Bush said of his brother.

It sounded like a worthy goal, and at the time, the Republican had reason to be optimistic – the event was in early July, when Jeb Bush was still at or near the top of national GOP polling. A campaign that elevates the discourse is easier when it’s winning.

It’s quite a bit tougher, though, when a campaign hits a rough patch. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel reports today, for example, on Team Jeb tackling a story about, of all things, Donald Trump’s sister.

It started with a Bloomberg Politics interview in which Mark Halperin asked about the Supreme Court and brought up the fact that Trump’s sister is an appeals-court judge. The candidate sang his sister’s praises, but said he’d rule her out for a high court nomination. Weigel picks it up from there:

[Trump’s] quote ran on Aug. 26. One day later, National Review columnist Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out that Maryanne Trump Barry was reliably pro-choice, and once rejected a lawsuit to stop partial birth abortions for “semantic machinations” about when life began. Just 20 minutes after that article went up, Bush’s spokesman and campaign manager tweeted it out, sexing it up a bit to say that Trump actually wanted to put his sister on the bench.

Jeb’s campaign manager actually pushed the story twice, “paging all pro-lifers.”

Can’t you just feel the discourse being elevated?

There’s a legitimate question about whether Team Jeb, and in fact all campaigns, would be better off leaving candidates’ family members out of the debate altogether. Sure, Trump said nice things about his sister, and apparently conservatives have reason to disagree with her, but unless there’s a substantive reason to connect the judge’s views with the candidate’s, it’s a questionable line of attack.

(Bush has no such luxury with his brother, since he’s already surrounded himself with the Bush/Cheney team and identified George W. Bush as one of his top advisers on the Middle East.)

But even if we put this aside, the fact that Team Jeb wants to talk about Trump’s sister at all is evidence of a campaign that has decided sticking to an above-the-fray posture is no longer sustainable. For quite a while, Bush and other establishment Republicans simply accepted as a given that the Trump Bubble would burst; the summer fling would end; and the race would return to some degree of normalcy.

But that confidence has obviously disappeared. The Bush campaign has taken a detour from the high road, not because it wanted to, but apparently because it feels it has to.

Weigel’s report added, “On April 20, Right to Rise chief strategist Mike Murphy told The Washington Post that the super PAC would not ‘uncork’ money to beat Trump. ‘Trump is, frankly, other people’s problem,’ he said. One day later, Right to Rise paid for a plane to buzz around Trump’s rally in Mobile, Alabama, telling onlookers that he supported ‘higher taxes.’”

You’ve heard the phrase, “Never let ‘em see you sweat”? Jeb Bush and his operation are sweating, and everyone can see it.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 28, 2015

August 29, 2015 Posted by | Donald Trump, GOP Presidential Candidates, Jeb Bush | , , , , , | 1 Comment

“It’s Looking Like Mother Knew Best”: The Reason Jeb Looks So Miserable

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Imagine you could find a person who didn’t know 1) who Jeb Bush was or 2) what pursuit he was involved in. You showed the person a video clip of a Bush press conference or speech, but with the sound turned down, and you asked the person, just based on the expression on Bush’s face and the hang of his shoulders and whatnot, where is this man, and what is he doing?

I think your person would say something like: “Well…he looks like he’s at a funeral. Attending the funeral of a friend’s mother. Or maybe not even a friend. Maybe a co-worker, or employee. He didn’t know the woman. But he’s there, because he needs to be, and he’s paying his respects. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m sure she was a wonderful woman.’ He’s doing his duty, but he also looks like he’d really rather be somewhere else.”

Bush has a lot of problems, which have become excruciatingly evident this week as he’s managed to offend Latinos and Asians and women (again) while still making no apparent headway with the kinds of people you’re supposed to make headway with by offending the aforementioned. But when you get right down to it, this is his problem. The Donald pegged him. He is a “low-energy person.” He looks like he has only the barest minimum interest in doing this.

On some level, politics is all about the gene. John Ellis doesn’t have it. No zest. No happy warrior thing going on at all. Say what you will about Dubya, and trust me, I said most of it at one time or another. But he had the gene. He liked politics. He enjoyed campaigning. He pinned his shoulders back up on stage, stood erect, gazed upon the crowd with something you might call command. Remember that smirk? Oh God how liberals hated that smirk! I remember how people on my side used to carry on about it, how it betrayed exactly the kind of shoot-first cowboy braggadocio that liberals find repulsive—and indeed, that ended up fucking up a big part of the world to this day. So we were right about that smirk. But at least he was smiling. At least he was up there having fun.

But Jeb. Yeesh. What’s he doing out there? It’s just duty. And not family duty either. Remember, his mom said he shouldn’t do it. His wife seems cool on it. At best. So it’s not family. It’s mostly party duty. Duty to the money people. Class duty.

Watching him I sometimes wonder: How did this guy get to be a governor? One thing I’ve learned in my years of covering politics, one of the more surprising things, I would say, is just how many utter mediocrities become governors. This is understandable in a lot of those puny states out there where the competition ain’t so great. And where either one party or the other is clearly dominant. So if you’re a Republican state legislator in Wyoming and you have a little charisma, or a Democratic mayor of Providence who has successfully avoided indictment for eight years, well, you can get to be governor. The road is not laid with many traps.

But Florida’s a big state. Probably a lot of talent there, comparatively speaking. How did Bush do it? Well, he was elected (1998) at a time when his last name was still a plus. And he was a Republican, and Florida elects Republican governors as a rule—I mean crikey, they’ve twice voted in a guy who swindled the federal government on Medicare, which many voters probably saw as a plus. So that’s all it took. He was a Republican, and his name was Bush.

But now that his last name is a liability, even (or especially) among GOP primary voters, he has to go out and get it, and the first step in getting it is wanting it, and he doesn’t seem to want it. In fact it looks like he dreads the thought of becoming president. Or is indifferent to it, which might be worse. Candidates have problems that they can fix. But how do you fix that problem?

So here’s how things seem to be shaping up, maybe. There’s going to be Trump. And then, after the rattle and hum of the first few contests, and the Perrys and Jindals and so forths have gone on their merry ways, there’s going to be one anointed non-Trump, whom the party’s panjandrums decide to get behind collectively in order to stop Trump. And that person is likely to be either Bush or Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or John Kasich. Or maybe someone else. (What’s that I hear you say? Mitt Romney? Not, at this point, an insane idea. Think about it.)

The non-Trump should easily and clearly have been Bush. And it still could be. I notice that still this week, even while Bush is getting slagged by everybody, the political futures market continues to rate him the favorite for the Republican nomination. So the wisdom of the crowd still says Bush, but we sense that it’s said in the same way that people might say “New England” or “Seattle” when asked who’ll win next year’s Super Bowl. The answer doesn’t reflect thought and analysis, just resigned reflex.

So he could still be the nominee, and by definition that means he could still be the next president. But as of now, he looks to have the makings of being one of the biggest flops in the history of presidential politics. A year ago all the experts thought otherwise, and sometimes the experts are right, but in this case, it’s looking like Mother knew best.

 

By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, August 28, 2015

August 29, 2015 Posted by | GOP Presidential Candidates, GOP Primaries, Jeb Bush | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Wallowing In Ignorance”: Epistemic Closure Comes Back To Haunt The GOP

Five years ago Julian Sanchez did us the favor of defining a pattern among conservatives that he called “epistemic closure.”

One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile…If disagreement is not in itself evidence of malign intent or moral degeneracy, people start feeling an obligation to engage it sincerely…And there is nothing more potentially fatal to the momentum of an insurgency fueled by anger than a conversation.

The entire basis for the existence of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is the belief that the “mainstream media” cannot be trusted to tell the truth because they are all “liberals.” This fed something that we as human beings already tend to do anyway – reject information that doesn’t conform to our already-established beliefs. It feels good to not have to grapple with the cognitive dissonance that comes with consideration of conflicting facts. But the end result is that it kills curiosity and we wallow in ignorance.

The disastrous results of epistemic closure for conservatives have been on display for some time now. It explains how they continue to deny the science of climate change, assume that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is “cooking the books” on unemployment data and led to a whole movement during the 2012 election to unskew the polls. But for everyone from Murdoch to GOP leaders, it worked to keep the base angry and engaged.

And then…it got out of control. Take a look at the results of Frank Lunz’s focus group with Trump supporters.

“They’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,'” Luntz said. “And (Trump) personifies it: Each sees in him what they want for the country. They want him to fix what makes them mad, and they believe he will.”

It is Trump’s ability to reflect back to voters their most fervent wishes for the nation, Luntz said, that makes the political outsider so dangerous to the rest of the 16 other GOP 2016 hopefuls. The main reason for this, Luntz found, was what he termed a willingness of Trump supporters to live in “an alternative universe” in which any attempt by the media to point out inconsistencies in Trump’s record or position was seen as a politically motivated conspiracy.

“When the media challenges the veracity of his statements, you take his side,” Luntz asked of his focus group. Only one person sat quietly, her hands in her lap, as 28 other arms shot up in agreement.

For these participants, the Republican establishment (and perhaps even Fox News itself) have now joined the liberal New York Times in peddling a politically motivated conspiracy when they challenge Donald Trump. That should come as no surprise when these same people have been told for years that they can pick and chose their facts based on how they make you feel. Stephen Colbert was positively prophetic when he coined the term “truthiness.” And now it’s all coming back to haunt the GOP.

 

By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, August 26, 2015

August 26, 2015 Posted by | Conservative Media, Donald Trump, GOP Presidential Candidates | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Who We Are As A Nation”: 11 Million People, But Just Three Choices

Whether or not it can be said that Donald Trump is pushing the Republican presidential field “to the right” on immigration policy, there’s zero question he is making it much harder for them to play games with it, as Greg Sargent points out at the Plum Line after watching Scott Walker and Carly Fiorina squirm through questioning on the Sunday shows.

When the GOP candidates are pressed on what they would do about the 11 million, the results tend not to be pretty. For instance, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked Carly Fiorina about Trump’s call for ending birthright citizenship -which Fiorina rejected far more forcefully than Walker did. But then Todd sensibly followed up with this:

TODD: What do you do with the 11 million?

FIORINA: My own view is, if you have come here illegally and stayed here illegally, you do not have an opportunity to earn a pathway to citizenship. To legal status, perhaps. But I think there must be consequence.

Fiorina says that “perhaps” undocumented immigrants should have a path to legal status — provided it precludes any chance at citizenship. Okay, if you’re not willing to support legal status, then what should be done instead? Walker, for his part, has declined to endorse mass deportations, but doesn’t think we should even talk about legalization until the border is secured.

There are really just three legitimate answers to Todd’s question: deportation, self-deportation, or legalization (though it’s possible to have a combination of the three). “I don’t want to talk about it until the border is secured” is a non-answer. Arguments over the remote possibility of repealing “birthright citizenship” are non-responsive, too. And if deportation–which presumably is what “just enforcing the law” would involve–is in the cards, we need frank talk about how to defray the incredibly high costs and whether the police state atmosphere it would involve could have some collateral effects on little matters like who we are as a nation.

Until Trump started talking about deportation, there was a tacit agreement within the GOP to keep it all vague so as to satisfy the people who really would like to see children herded onto cattle cars and sent to the border without alarming everyone else–you know, kind of like the tacit agreement not to discuss Carly Fiorina’s qualifications to be president, which Trump also broke. But journalists really need to stop letting these birds avoid the key questions or have it every which way or change the subject.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, August 24, 2015

August 25, 2015 Posted by | Donald Trump, GOP Presidential Candidates, Immigration | , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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