Observers of the political scene may recall that Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) led an effort to write and pass a bipartisan immigration bill back in 2015, right up until his Party told him this was not useful, at which time he repudiated the bill. It failed to pass; it may not have even received a vote.
Why was it not useful? The Republican Party at the Federal level, as many of those same observers will diagnose, is built on grievance, not on accomplishment. Immigration, school vouchers, Christian Nationalism, abortion, the Federal debt – these are the issues that have not been resolved for a very long time. Some, like Christian Nationalism, are belabored by the most difficult of hurdles, a forbidding clause in the Constitution, and only make progress through dubious arguments accepted by SCOTUS. Others, such as abortion, required a decades-long effort to populate SCOTUS with anti-abortion Justices to take away a Constitutional protection.
It’s noteworthy that possibly the greatest mistake of the Republicans in recent memory was the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs, as it inflamed not only the active pro-choice groups, but also conservatives who suddenly discovered an existential risk to themselves and their sisters, and previously inactive voters who, again, discovered an existential risk to them and their sisters. To be succinct, the putative decision puts women’s lives at real, existential risk, thus proving the intellectual winners of the contest are the pro-choice forces, and because the Republicans began losing close elections.
Returning to the point, the parallel of the Rubio experience of almost ten years ago with the Senator James Lankford (R-OK) experience of the last few weeks has seemed only a curiosity. As another brief aside for those readers unfamiliar with Senator Lankford’s work, here’s Steve Benen’s summation:
Lankford spent four months doing real legislative work, forging a multifaceted compromise on border policy, immigration policy, and security aid. Given his credibility in far-right circles, and the strength of the bill, the senator predicted as recently as a month ago that the bipartisan package would receive as many as 70 votes.
A month later, Lankford’s bill is effectively dead — killed by his own party, the day after he and his negotiating partners unveiled it. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is making his displeasure with the senator known, boasting yesterday that he didn’t endorse Lankford’s 2022 re-election bid, despite the fact that the former president really did endorse Lankford’s 2022 re-election bid.
With a key part being:
… of a Fox News interview in which Lankford also said, “The key aspect of this, again, is, are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?”
Well, yes – because Mr. Trump, running for President again, demands it. Of this there is no dispute.
As I said, a curiosity that happens to prove the Republicans operate on grievance, not accomplishment. But, as storytellers and military strategists know, the evil guys in a conflict are those that fight among themselves for personal advantage, leading, often enough, to triumph for the good guys. And, following an article on Daily Kos, a MarketWatch article suggests this may be true again, this time in connection with immigration and the surprising strength, and Biden reelection bulwark, of the economy:
Analysts at institutional brokerage Strategas led by Don Rissmiller agree that what they call “big fiscal” — the large budget deficits being run at a time of full employment — is a major driver of the economy. But they also point to another factor at work: immigration. “There are good reasons to believe the U.S. has benefited from positive supply effects, ie, there’s surprisingly solid real economic growth (~3%) along with more tame inflation (~3%) as we start 2024,” they say in a presentation. And the upside really appears to be specific to the U.S. rather than global.
My bold.
And, I think, it’s a two-fer. Not only is Mr. Trump’s puddle-headed interference in Senator Lankford’s effort leading to a high-performing economy with lower inflation, benefiting is eventual opponent, President Biden, but it also leaves the Republicans with a festering wound in connection with their refusal to begin fixing, whatever that may mean, the immigration problem at the border. This has led to illegal efforts by Governor Abbot (R-TX) and others to resolve the problem, including talk of secession by disgraceful far-right power mongers in the Republican Party.
All of this, properly messaged, may cost the Republicans yet another election cycle.
So it’s rather fascinating to watch the self-immolation of the Republicans, but running a Party on grievance rather than accomplishment is not only an evil thing to do, theoretically, but is proving in real world experience to have bad consequences. Which is sort of definitional.
The Republican leaders remain a hotly corrupt mess, and the base is a pack of marks.
