Washington Post
(Plum Line)
By Greg Sargent
August 25, 2015
The
consensus among many of our wisest political observers is that
Trump-ism is a real phenomenon, that it’s here to stay for the near
future, and that it
may pose a real long-term risk to the GOP. In a piece entitled, “Can
the Republican Party survive Donald Trump?” Molly Ball reports that GOP
donors and strategists are fretting that Trump has exposed the GOP’s
“fault lines” on immigration in ways that could
do the party untold damage in 2016.
And
Time magazine reports that GOP pollster Frank Luntz held a focus group
designed to plumb the sources of Trump’s appeal, and left stunned. “You
guys understand
how significant this is?” Luntz said afterwards. “This is real. I’m
having trouble processing it. Like, my legs are shaking.”
So
here’s a friendly reminder: this whole Trump mess probably could have
been avoided. If Republicans had simply held votes on immigration reform
in 2013 or
in early 2014, it probably would have passed. That likely would have
made it harder for Trump-ism to take hold to the degree it has so far.
Before
you ridicule me for suggesting that Republicans would be better off
today if they had simply done what I wanted them to do — pass
immigration reform
— please recall that GOP leaders themselves said at the time that they
wanted to pass immigration reform. Even reform that included a path to
legalization for the 11 million.
In
July of 2013, House Speaker John Boehner strongly suggested that he
would hold a vote on some kind of bill that included legalization, in
order to “find
out” whether it could pass the House. In January of 2014, House GOP
leaders rolled out a set of broad principles that included a path to
legal status. These were real steps forward for a party whose nominee
had embraced self-deportation less than two years
earlier. In the spring of 2014, Boehner even mocked fellow Republicans
for their reluctance to embrace reform, mimicking them as follows:
“Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard.” Watch that
again today:
But
conservatives revolted, Boehner shelved plans to pursue reform, and
Republican leaders and aides quietly assured reporters that the party
could always
pass reform in 2015, to fix the Latino problem in time for 2016.
But
some Republicans explicitly warned at the time that if the party failed
to pass reform in 2014, it would only get harder to do so in 2015,
because the
GOP primaries would start up. GOP pollster Whit Ayres warned:
“If
Republicans wait until 2015 to tackle this issue, that puts a very
emotional and controversial issue right in the middle of the Republican
presidential
selection process. The opportunity for demagoguery will be exceedingly
prevalent if we wait that long. It could drag the entire field to the
right on immigration.”
Veteran
GOP operative Rob Jesmer similarly warned that if Republicans didn’t
embrace reform, “presidential politics will consume our party, which
will make
it more difficult to get it passed. ” Jesmer added: “We will severely
diminish our chances of winning the presidential election in 2016 if
this isn’t solved.” And as Jonathan Chait details, some conservative
pundits, operating from the same rationale, also
called for Republicans to pass “immigration reform as quickly as
possible” and take the short term hit from the right, “allowing the base
to vent its spleen and make up in time for the presidential campaign.”
In
other words, some Republicans warned at the time that the party needed
to embrace reform precisely to avoid the epic slow-motion disaster that
might unfold
if immigration got tied up in primary politics, creating fertile
conditions for a talented demagogue to pull the party further to the
right. Which is exactly what is happening now.
To
be fair, it’s hard to know for certain if passing reform then would
have led to less fertile soil for Trump-ism to take root later. It’s a
counter-factual,
and Trump-ism appears to have many causes.
But
it’s hardly an unreasonable suggestion. Imagine if House Republicans
had simply held a vote on the Senate immigration bill, passing it with a
lot of Dems,
or had passed their own proposals and entered into conference
negotiations that resulted in a bill that included legalization. The
resulting measure would have meant enormous new investments in border
security that would have carried — and this is a crucial
point — bipartisan buy-in. As it is, border apprehensions have been at
near record lows, and the flow of illegal immigration has leveled off,
so the story Trump is telling is already ludicrous enough. But if
Republicans and Democrats had cooperated to invest
billions in further militarizing the border, it probably would have
been harder still for Trump to tell his tale, and his immigration
demagoguery might not have gripped his supporters’ imagination in quite
the manner we’re seeing.
Also,
if legalization had passed, Trump would obviously have had a tougher
time calling for mass deportations. And at any rate, if Republicans had
passed immigration
reform, the long term damage Trump-ism (and his rivals gravitating
towards his positions) could do to the party among Latinos probably
would have been mitigated.
Obviously
foes of legalization will argue that none of the above constitutes a
substantive rationale for reform. But it bears repeating that many
Republicans
support legalization on substantive and even moral grounds. The party
has long been split between those who can’t accept legalization under
any circumstances (or unless some undefined ideal of border security has
been attained first), and those who are willing
to enter with Democrats into some kind of compromise that exchanges
more border investments for concurrent legalization, under strict
conditions. The former group of Republicans got their way. The latter
group of Republicans didn’t. They declined to pursue
that compromise. Even though they themselves knew that their punt could
result in an outcome like the one Trump has bought us today.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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