First of all, it appears that I was wrong the other day: Scott Walker does not have a rudimentary grasp of Amendment XIV, Section 1 if he's now talking about - and opposing - a repeal of birthright citizenship that the Citizenship Clause already, in fact, prohibits. Chris Christie, being both a RINO and a product of the "judicial review" ethos, never had any grasp of that fact whatsoever.
But they are both right about the impracticability of the purported Trump immigration plan. It comes down not to what should be done, not what we wish we could do, but to what's possible. Do I wish we could deport all thirty million illegals, build an impregnable border wall, and make Mexico and Central American countries pay for it? Sure, as much as all of you Tea Party Trumpsters do. But the Big Man is not wrong when he calls Trump's pie-in-the-sky promises of same "simplistic". "Fantasy" would be a better term. I'll say it again: No Congress, not even one filled with 535 Ted Cruz clones, would ever appropriate the hundreds of billions of dollars such a plan would require, not because they necessarily opposed it, but because it couldn't be done. Finding thirty million specific people is hard enough; rounding them all up would be even more difficult because a lot of them would attempt to flee, and the PR optics of hunting them down plus the - what would you call them? Pens? Camps? - in which all those illegals would have to be "detained" - would be unimaginable. And remember: thirty million people. Where could they possibly be kept even if they could all be rounded up? Where would the feds find that many law enforcement personnel? How long would it take? These details matter. And if we've learned anything about Donald Trump over the past couple of months, it's that details are not his thing. Which makes perfect sense if you're nothing but a demagogue and a Donk plant attempting to lead astray a large segment of the Republican base and make them and the party look like the worst leftwing stereotypes of conservatives ever conceived in order to make the queen of the Clinton Crime Family look "moderate" and "reasonable".
Governor Walker did score again by zeroing in on that point:
Walker, appearing on ABC's This Week, said Trump sounded like a Democrat when he attacked Walker's record in Wisconsin earlier on Sunday.
"Well, he’s using the talking points of the Democrats," Walker told host George Stephanopoulos. "They didn’t work in the past. They’re not going to work now."
"Our roads are actually better," Walker said of Wisconsin. "Our schools are better. Our State is better."
I find it interesting that Trump felt the need to (1) attack Walk again when he's supposedly "running away with the GOP nomination" and (2) used the same tired tack that has been his only avenue of attack against the Wisconsin Governor - which parrots what the Dems used against Walk in his three victorious Statewide elections. Why not ignore him? And why make Trump's true Democrat leanings so conspicuous? Or does it really matter since Tea Party Trumpmania is a totally emotional phenomenon beyond reason or logic?
Here's the latest example:
You know Mexico is the new China. The other day Nabisco, Nabisco…Oreos right Oreos. I love Oreos, I’ll never eat them again. K? Never eat ‘em again. Nabisco closes a plant, they just announced a couple days ago, in Chicago and they’re moving the plant to Mexico. Now why? Why? Why? Have you heard my favorite story is Ford…So Ford…they’re building a $2.5 billion car factory in Mexico. Now they’re closing up places in the United States…they’re gonna go in they’re gonna build this plant, they’re [sic] sell cars, they’re gonna sell them back to us. Where does that help us? Explain. Explain. There’s not tax. There’s no nothing, there’s no nothing. So we’re closing plants here, they’re building this massive plant in Mexico.
Ah, such soaring eloquence. It brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? It truly does. I seem to recall that when Ronald Reagan's verbal cadence sounded like this in his first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984, the press was ready to throw him into an ambulance and send him off to the old folk's home.
But has it occurred to TPTers who used to know what the "TEA" in "Tea Party" - Taxed Enough Already" - stood for that their hero is not only not citing the fact that perhaps a big reason why U.S. companies keep "exporting jobs" is because the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the post-industrialized world as well as an equally and viciously hostile, anti-business regulatory climate, but is trying to demagogically whip up even more anti-business hostility than Barack Obama has already? And this is a supposed businessman!
This is the rhetoric that is packing football stadiums in freaking Alabama? A guy that sounds like Dick Gephardt with Tourets? Another five minutes of this protectionist doggerel and Dick Trumka might have leaped on the stage, run up to Trump, and passionately kissed him square on the lips.
Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is, at best, a faux populist - and, of course, a Democrat. How a "flamboyant" billionaire with Hollywood values can possibly be seen as a "man of the people" who "understands my problems" over a State governor who still mows his own lawn and carries a large balance on a Sears credit card and has an unimpeachable Tea Party policy and governing track record is a nightmare I can only hope and pray we all wake from before it's too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment