Frum: Trump’s Executive Intelligence
The immigration issue cuts deep not because Republicans are so nativist, but because so many Republicans have come to fear that their leaders have turned anti-native.Speaking to the Faith and Freedom conference in Washington in 2013, Jeb Bush seemed to hold Americans up to unfavorable comparison with newcomers:
Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans over the last 20 years. Immigrants are more fertile, and they have more intact families. They bring a younger population. The one way that we can rebuild the demographic pyramid is to fix a broken immigration system to allow for people to come, to learn English, to play by our rules, to embrace our values, and to pursue their dreams in our country with a vengeance—to create more opportunities for all of us. This is a conservative idea. If we do this, we will rebuild our country in a way that will allow us to grow. If we don’t do it, we will be in decline—because the productivity of this country is dependent on young people that are able to work hard.
That last line of the quote seemed the most insulting of all: Left on their own, the descendants of the people who built the country lack what it takes to keep the country great.
.. Trump voters, by contrast, come from the much more numerous ranks of those who remain worse off today than they were in 1999. They want a strong leader who can and will keep faith with them. Who else in the GOP contest can plausibly make that claim?