If even Ted Cruz is effectively throwing in the towel on even "deferred deportation," then, "pro-amnesty forces can now declare victory: Even a majority of the GOP is on-board with legalization, and once legalization happens, citizenship will inexorably follow. Game over." Or, as I wrote a month ago, public opposition to Obamnesty is gone.
But as I also said then:
[I]t seems pretty clear that the American people across the board are resigning themselves....[to] the extinction of citizenship and the loss of what used to be our country to the "Old World" from which our (legal) immigrant ancestors originally fled.
Not a change of mind, but a bowing to the perceived inevitable....
Yet....
Higher percentages of Republicans object to rewarding illegals' lawbreaking with amnesty and unearned citizenship and recognize the economic, cultural, and civic damage that illegal immigration inflicts upon the country than do support amnesty itself. But not by much. How are these contradictory numbers reconcilable?
Only one way: Republicans have given up. Surrendered. Capitulated. Run up the white flag. Seen and come to terms with the cold, hard fact that by the time there's a Republican president in office to shut the Obamnesty window - if there ever is one - the damage it was meant to inflict will be long since irreversibly done.
Just as Barack Obama knew would be the case.
- Me, four months ago
And the resignation has continued its depressingly steady increase:
"Certain requirements" typically mean learning English and paying taxes, but in practice denote "still breathing" and "reproducing like randy rabbits". But the same curiously contradictory dynamic is still in place on the Republican side: 53% want (unconstitutional) "birthright citizenship" terminated, 73% want a border wall complete with machine gun emplacements, barbed wire, minefields, and digging a mote to connect the Rio Grande to the Pacific, but two thirds are still amenable to a "path to citizenship" that they have to know will become an expressway. Which tells me the same thing as Pew's results back in June did: Most on the Right don't believe we'll ever get an end to "birthright citizenship," a border wall, the repeal of Obamnesty, or anything else Trumpmaniacs are ragingly demanding, and have been reduced to trying to make the "pathway to citizenship as legitimate and earn-worthy as still possible.
Of course, there's considerable non-overlap as well. Some of that two-thirds are simply pro-amnesty, although they remain a small minority of the GOP overall. But in other ways the numbers do add up, as Trump's poll numbers at their height topped out in the low to mid thirties, which fits this Pew two-thirds amnesty support (whatever the motivations) quite nicely. It also illustrates how a single-issue faction can gain a disproportionate upper hand in a party nominating process under the right circumstances. Trumpmaniacs' problem in this regard is....Trump, whose novice status, self-combusting flamboyant bombast, Romneyesque flip-flopping, and all-around idiocy has done the cause of combating illegal immigration no favors, as Trump's eroding support is beginning to illustrate. They'd be better served to dump Trump and line up behind Ted Cruz if they want to have a "true conservative" still in the top tier now that Scott Walker has bowed out, as well as a sympathetic but serious ear on their single-issue. Which, of course, is another reason why Cruz has been playing footsie with Trump since back in July.
Although I have to wonder if, with Walk's departure, whether any rightie believes that a Cruz presidency is even possible. Get a load of this YouGov question on the ideological direction of the country over the next quarter-century:
Dems believe America will continue to move to the left by a 44%-10% margin. Not surprising; leftwingnuts have and do never lack for confidence. But "independents" believe it as well by 39%-12%, and Republicans by better than two to one (47%-21%). And who, frankly, can blame them? Look what Barack Obama has accomplished over the past near-decade. Look at the fact that Barack Obama got re-elected after what was, in historical context, one of if not the worst first terms in American presidential history. I know my confidence in my fellow voting Americans was shattered by the 2012 result; I've been saying we crossed the proverbial Rubicon ever since then, even as the proprietor of this site has doggedly and indefatigueably maintained a brave front of "United we stand, combined we kick butt" optimism. And, to square the circle, look at how elected Republicans have been so unable and/or unwilling to even attempt to do anything to seriously combat the irreversible damage being done to the Old American Republic.
That's why I think this latest Pew result on de facto GOP amnesty support is primarily demoralization and resigned defeatism. It may not be inspiring, but it is rational. After a certain point, you have to begin coming to grips with the reality of the situation: We've lost. We're licked. America has been "fundamentally transformed," and there's no turning back. No amount of standing united and butt-kicking will change that. And so we've simply got to make the best of where we're at and what we've got. Because a constant, perpetual state of misdirected rage simply is not healthy, physically, mentally, or otherwise.
You could say that Trumpmania has been Dylan Thomas's "raging against the dying of the light".
But that light is dying anyway.
Only a third of Republicans are still cursing the darkness.
But that, too, shall fade.
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