Trump Avoids the Immigration Flip-Flopping Bloodbath
In the middle of Thursday night's debate, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul spent about ten minutes trading accusations of inconsistency on immigration reform. It felt like the last ten minutes of The Departed, where almost every major character suffered a grievous injury. Every leading candidate on that stage has taken, in the past couple years, at least one big step in the restrictionist direction. Most notably, Rubio used to support a path to citizenship; now he wants a path to legalization -- in November, he indicated he was open to providing a path to citizenship after ten years. (Key distinction: Legal non-citizens can't vote. Some strongly suspect that if 11 million were legalized, Democrats would start a major push to give them citizenship, calling it a great injustice, etc.) In 2013, Cruz pushed for an amendment that would have barred the 11 million from citizenship, but permitted legalization. Now he opposes a path to legalization. Everybody seems to think that they can deflect accusations of flip-flopping by pointing to their rivals' shifts in position. The rivals respond by pointing to the accuser's position changes, and everybody comes out looking shifty and inauthentic. I think Iowa caucus-goers who are still undecided or wavering, who are really mad about illegal immigration, turn to Donald Trump -- never mind that Trump wants to bring back "the good ones" among illegal immigrants in an expedited process. Trump supporters have an amazing ability to hear what they want to hear, and tune out the rest. Illegal immigrants worked on demolition for the Trump Tower project? Eh, no big deal. Illegal immigrants working on Trump's Washington D.C. hotel construction site? Eh, probably just more media lies. (As I pointed out yesterday, it seems exceptionally unlikely that the workers quoted by the Washington Post are actually legal immigrants and are falsely claiming to be illegal immigrants.) Trump's companies use H2B visas pretty regularly, bringing in foreign workers because they claim they can't find qualified American workers . . . to work as maids, cooks, and wait staff. Democrats in 2008 wanted a messiah, so they looked at Obama and insisted they saw a messiah before them. Republicans in 2016 want a tough restrictionist on immigration, and so they look at Trump and insisted they see a tough restrictionist before them. I cannot believe Rubio doesn't just say, "Yeah, I've rethought the issue, and concluded the path to citizenship is a bad idea," instead of trying to insist he really said "blanket amnesty," and meant something different. Still, for what it's worth, Frank Luntz said his focus group loved Rubio's answers. To political junkies like us, "I'm not going to use unconstitutional executive orders like Barack Obama," sounds like a dodge because it's about process, not the ultimate fate of illegal immigrants -- but to ordinary voters, it seems common-sense and decent. Rubio's bad nights are still better than most candidates' good nights. Fox Moderators: Tough . . . Maybe Too Tough? Trump wasn't there to have his past statements showcased to the audiences at home and in the hall. Could you imagine if Trump had stayed, and Megyn Kelly confronted Trump, showing his old quotes on video? The confrontation would have been epic. The video clips played by Fox News were great journalism -- they eliminated the instinctive, "Megyn, I never said that," or "Chris, you're taking my words out of context" -- but they were brutal for the two leading non-Trump candidates. This is the second straight debate moderated by Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace that featured tough questions to the candidates, asking them about the weakest and most contradictory spots on their records. Fox News clearly came into that first debate with a bit of a chip on their shoulder; the network, or at least those anchors, are tired of people claiming they're GOP water-carriers. (It is a silly, inaccurate charge.) They came out and demonstrated they're willing to ask tough questions about policy, consistency, and past statements to all of the candidates. The problem is that accusations of bias in favor of the GOP bother Fox News in a way that accusations of bias in favor of the Democrats don't bother other networks. Did you get the feeling that ABC, CNN, CBS or NBC came out of the gate, eager to demonstrate they can throw tough questions at the Republicans? Imagine if other networks emulated Fox News' use of video. Picture them showing Hillary Clinton in March 2015, assuring the public there was no classified information on her server. Then the moderator hold up the letter from the Intelligence Community's Inspector General, declaring that an intelligence official examined "several dozen e-mails containing classified information determined . . . to be . . . CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET/SAP information" residing on Clinton's server. (SAP is an acronym for "special access programs," a level of classification above top secret.) "Secretary Clinton, wasn't that March statement a lie? In light of the inspector general's findings, how can you possibly continue to claim you did nothing wrong?" Other Debate Notes . . . Trump was elsewhere in Des Moines, welcoming the metaphorical genuflection of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Gentlemen, usually you announce the suspension of your campaign before you effectively endorse another candidate. Ben Carson, despite flubbing policy details last night, is an indisputably smart and accomplished man, whose heart almost always seems to be in the right place, and who seems like a nice, dignified, polite man in a primary that has generally lacked niceties, dignity, and manners. In a normal year, his style would seem to match well with Iowans. But this seems like a severely abnormal year. Cruz had the guts to criticize ethanol mandates and subsidies before an audience in Iowa. He deserves roaring applause for that; but considering the state's passionate, embarrassing love affair with big government when it helps their preferred industries, it will probably hurt him. Forty-nine other states ought to give him an "attaboy" for his courage. ADDENDA: In this week's pop-culture podcast, posted later today, a look at FX's The People vs. O.J. Simpson and the national legacy of the Simpson trial; chewing over new X-Files series, Marvel's Agent Carter and the rarity of television shows that suddenly get much better; the menace of drunk-texting; a look at the wilder weight-loss television shows and the serious drug problem among America's coyotes -- and no, we're not talking about people-smugglers.  |
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