Run For The Border

.@ralphreed on the GOP he came up in vs today in re: the Georgia voting law

"After business and the media circled the wagons, we would have called the legislature back in, done some fixes and moved on,” he said. “Now we just dig in.”https://t.co/E7ytjPgv8n

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT)

April 10, 2021

In particular, they are eager to highlight immigration at a moment when there is a surge of undocumented migrants at the border. Besides being Mr. Trump’s signature issue, it also has the strongest cultural resonance with their heavily white base.

An NPR/Marist survey last month found that while 64 percent of independent voters approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the pandemic, only 27 percent supported his approach to immigration.

At a private lunch last month on the same day House Democrats pushed through Mr. Biden’s stimulus bill, Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican with the ear of Mr. McConnell, confidently predicted that the influx at the border would be the party’s ticket back to the majority.

“I think this is a central issue in the campaign in 2022 — in part because it’s not clear to me that Joe Biden is strong enough and has the political willpower to do what is necessary and get the border under control,” Mr. Cotton said in a subsequent interview.

It is not just conservatives who are focusing on the border. Representative John Katko, a moderate New York Republican who represents an upstate district that went heavily for Mr. Biden, warned that immigration flare-ups would be “hung around” Mr. Biden’s neck if he was not careful.

“It’s not a good issue for people in the suburbs; it’s not a good issue for moderate Republicans; it’s not a good issue for moderate Democrats; it’s certainly not a good issue for independents,” he said.

With much to gain from blaming the issue on Democrats, Republicans have all but abandoned a comprehensive immigration agreement, despite the pleadings of the business lobby.

"Scary Brown people” works better in times of economic crisis or when the POTUS is a racist xenophobe urging on like-minded people. As long as the handling of immigrants is orderly and there are no children in cages or being forcibly removed from their mothers, people are going to pay attention to their own problems instead, And Biden is doing his best to address those problems, and is apparently addressing them very well.

Remember the GOP trip to the border, complete with James O’Keefe quality video?  Nether does anybody else, now.  Just this week Gov. Absent of Texas called a press conference, complete with Texas Rangers in uniform (which ought to be illegal, frankly) on camera, to denounce a facility in San Antonio holding immigrant children.  Abbott declared, based on a few unfounded allegations from spurious sources, that the center was rife with abuse and must be closed instanter, and pledged that the Rangers would be investigating.  That will disappear below public notice unless Abbott keeps it alive, and it’s not clear it benefits him to do so.  The story he advanced has already been challenged by a reliable witness (a County Commissioner who has visited the facility many times; Abbott hasn’t been there once), so he may have decided to drop it.  Or to raise it later, when he thinks people have forgotten the challenge.  Either way, the political value of it is nil in a state far more worried about electricity generation.  If Abbott doesn’t get that right, it won’t matter what he says about the border.

Nobody outside of Texas is paying attention to Abbott; and nobody inside Texas cares about the border as much as they do about the recent winter storm.  Republicans are bleating about the “open border,” but not the GOP leadership.  Has McConnell mentioned it, or McCarthy?   Hell, Allen West is getting more attention for stupidly insisting Texas can secede whenever it chooses (He’s a carptetbagger, and a fool.  Apparently Juneteenth (the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation on Galveston Island) and the occupation of Texas by Federal troops during Reconstruction, escaped his notice.  Didn’t Texas have a “get out of Reconstruction Free” card?).  Note that all the sources in the NYT article who insist the border “crisis” is a problem for Biden are Republicans.

As they are either becoming marks for Trump or forming a circular firing squad, it’s safe to call this “hope” whistling past the graveyard.  Because the border “crisis” is not going to save the GOP from Trump’s con or the urge to purge.