Many commentators claim that this wild rhetoric helps Trump suck up media oxygen or appear like a straight-talking political outsider. But the most important benefit of the anti-immigrant language is that it inoculates Trump against the charge of being a closet liberal.
Trump has a seemingly fatal vulnerability in the Republican primary: His past support for a host of moderate and liberal positions. In recent years, Trump said he would “press for universal health care,” claimed that he was “pro-choice in every respect,” remarked that “I hate the concept of guns,” stated that Hillary Clinton would “do a good job” in negotiating with Iran, asserted that the GOP was “just too crazy right,” and even said, “In many cases, I probably identify more as a Democrat.”
.. For Trump, the solution has been to announce something so outrageously offensive to liberals, so contrary to every progressive shibboleth, that its utterance immediately disqualifies him from being a leftist.
.. What Trump needs is something that is literally unspeakable for a liberal. Trump’s immigration policy is just the ticket. Virtually no progressive would dream of banning the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims from visiting the United States. The very idea represents a kind of exclusionary nativism that is anathema to liberals. Trump’s anti-immigrant language is an efficient way of proving that he has abandoned the left. In a single glorious moment of illiberal demagoguery, he can achieve what would otherwise take months of debate and rebuttal.
.. Once Republican voters identify with Trump, it unleashes what psychologists call “cognitive consistency.” People will rearrange their beliefs to produce an unswervingly positive view of the candidate.
.. The anti-immigrant language is therefore central to Trump’s political rise and to his victory in New Hampshire. Strip it away and Trump would be widely criticized as a conservative in name only.
Donald Trump Stands by As His Debate Rivals Hit One Another
It was an odd mistake, on Cruz’s part, to tell a lie in front of the person whose abeyance on this issue he needs if he is to move on, especially since Carson, who is usually somewhat cryptic, had hurt written on his face.
.. The other candidates seem to have become franchisees of Trump’s brand of personal attack. He just sits back and collects the political equivalent of licensing fees. What may be more damaging to the G.O.P. is that Trump’s ideology seems to have been franchised as well. The hyper-nationalism, the insinuations of treachery at the highest level of government, the disdain for civil rights and international accords, the fetishizing of military force, and the raw bigotry—all have somehow become part of the Republican Party’s normal back-and-forth.
.. Rubio’s talking point, for example, was striking in its repetition, but all the more so in its content. When he said that Obama knew what he was doing, he meant that “all this damage that he’s done to America is deliberate. This is a President that’s trying to redefine this country.”
.. Cruz said that he would, although he thought that the torturers should be senior people—those at “low levels” handled it badly.
The Real Romney Legacy: George Romney
The Michigan governor would not endorse conservative Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964, because of his appeals to Democratic segregationists. And when Romney was in Richard Nixon’s cabinet, he drove the president to distraction with his highly public efforts to integrate housing in all-white suburbs.
.. As president of the American Motors Company, briefly among Detroit’s most innovative car makers, Romney believed corporations had multiple stakeholders, as described by Rick Perlstein. If they are people, corporations also constitute a community of individuals who depend on each other. “Each owes a debt to the other,” a biographer quoted Romney as saying. Hoover’s rugged individualism, Romney thought, was “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”
.. As Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Nixon, he was implacable in the view that minorities deserve access to quality housing in affluent white suburbs, so much so he became a political liability. Nixon was not willing, as Romney was, to sacrifice the support of white voters in the name of egalitarianism. Until the president cut off all funding to desegregate suburbia, Romney’s HUD, according to sociologist Christopher Bonastia, “came surprisingly close to implementing unpopular anti-discrimination policies.”
.. With Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, liberal Republicans were on a path toward extinction. Who was the last? Some say Nelson Rockefeller. Others say George Romney. Others still say Jack Kemp. But a pretty good case can be made for George Romney’s son Mitt, particularly during his first run for president in 2008, before the former Massachusetts governor rejected his record of using liberal methods to achieve Republican goals.
.. The divisive rhetoric never came naturally to Mitt Romney. The ideology of his youth wasn’t steeped in the coded language of the Southern Strategy, as it was for candidates like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who famously called Obama America’s greatest “food-stamp president.” The ideology of Romney’s youth was the opposite.
Patrick J. Buchanan The Civil War on the Right
Millions of conservatives and independents believe it was the Republican policies of the recent past that also failed America.
The Bush-Clinton-Obama trade policies produced the $12 trillion in trade deficits, which measures the net export of U.S. factories and manufacturing jobs, which explain the wage stagnation.
.. In short, it will be difficult for populists to unite with Beltway conservatives in 2016, when the former see the latter as part of the problem, not the solution.