The Romney/Establishment Attack on Trump Is All About Open Borders, and Always Has Been

I've wanted to write about this myself for a long while.

Dave Reaboi makes different points than I have in mind, but he makes the basic point: all this shrieking about "character" by the neocons, liberal Republicans, and Establishment types is just some ideological camouflage to disguise the real objection to Trump, that is, that it's racist to oppose Open Borders.

They don't want to say that -- they believe it intensely, but they don't want to admit they share yet another key ideological premise with their close cousins on the globalist hard left -- so they pretend this is all about a rather small difference in free trade and the tactics to achieve actual free trade and, of course, about "character."

It's not. It's just that these people have such low character -- they are inveterate liars and are long practiced in misrepresenting their believes and their intentions to the voters they con into voting them into power -- that they lie without a thought about it.

They will go on lying about it. Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney, Jonah Goldberg, almost all of National Review, etc., will continue playing hide-the-ball regarding their real views on immigration -- which are open borders in all but name, just keep doing what we're doing, which is virtually nothing (which is why the open borders people endorse our current #FakeNews immigration enforcement) -- acting as perfect cowards in refusing to clearly announce their actual beliefs and preferences and pretending this is all merely a dispute about "character."

Well it is -- in a way. They believe that anyone who opposes their de facto open borders position is a racist and therefore has bad "character."

They just won't say so. They've grown accustomed to lying to their readers, constituents, and voters about just how monstrously racist and evil they believe them to be. They only gain the courage to state these beliefs forthrightly when, like Max Boot, they officially defect to the liberal Democrat camp.

But your character is bad.

Their character -- all lies and cowardice and self-dealing -- is sterling.

And super-Christian.

Just ask them!

Immigration is really the only issue that matters—but not in the way you might think.

— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) January 2, 2019

We've got now a significant minority in the country--and a powerful majority in elite institutions like media and academia--that believes we don't have a right to restrict immigration into the US at all, because it's racist.

This loud minority is amplified on social media, sure--but conservatives understand that these are the people who’re teaching their children and creating the intellectual environment for them. They see, correctly, that it's only a matter of time.

When Trump says "if we don’t have borders, we don't have a country," that aphorism resonates because it’s *more essentially true* than anything in GOP orthodoxy you'd read about in any conservative media pre-Trump.

The Trump/Romney argument on the Right, at this point, is utterly boring. It's the same conflict, like the Eternal Recurrence, between people who know what time it is, and people who don't. It's rancorous precisely because it's a conflict about perception of the threat.

It's also a battle that’s been won by the Trump side--even if the folks cheering Romney today don’t realize it.

The status quo GOP candidates were totally routed in 2016; both Trump and Cruz resonated with the GOP electorate because they're "America is in Crisis" candidates.

Marco Rubio was the quintessential status quo GOP candidate. It's like he was weaned on Weekly Standard and WSJ op/eds.

His message of optimism was rejected by people who knew what time it was--people who understand that America had changed significantly since Reagan and Bush.

If you know what time it is, and understand that we’re losing not just our common culture American identity--that's pretty much gone--but now, the concept of national sovereignty full-stop, you are legitimately furious at would-be allies who are knifing you in the back.

If you believe this massive cultural & philosophical conflict will be won without "tribalism," you do not know enough about this to be of much use going forward.

Many of the pro-Trump people you hate understand this, and that's why they're frustrated AF with you.

A final thought: Rubio voter types seem to believe that taking in any amount of any kind of immigrants would not change the character or politics of America in any real way, certainly not negative.

For people in the real world, however--people who know what time it is--this insane belief is proof you're so ideologically blinded on something so basic, you can't be trusted.

It's not that these people are stupid or evil; they just believe a bunch of things that manifestly are not true in order to reach what they believe is the only conclusion that's possible given these assumptions.

I'll have to do another Universal Values Delusion thread, because it's worth repeating. It's a misunderstanding of American principles that’s so tightly held, it's become a dogma that’s crowded-out even self-evident, plainly observable truths.

posted by Ace of Spades at 01:30 PM

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