GOP fractures

When last week his rally booed Donald Trump’s suggestion that attendees get vaccinated against COVID-19, it was a clue that he was losing his grip on the political base he helped radicalize. Trump had not initiated their descent into madness, but until recently he seemed their master. Movement conservatives had bred and fed the monster for decades when, like so many man-made monsters in fiction, they lost control. Trump seemed in command of the mob, too, until recently. Watch Sen. Lindsey Graham for signs of Trump’s eroding influence on the GOP.

While the party is united in its criticism of President Joe Biden over the Afghanistan evacuation, the effort to resettle refugees is driving a wedge between Republicans willing to accept Afghan refugees into the United States and those fed years of relentless anti-immigrant messages from Trump and his closest allies.

On the one hand, the GOP on the whole wants to slam Biden’s evacuation efforts (about 100,000 have been evacuated to date) over the fate of American allies who risk retribution by the Taliban if they stay. The message from the anti-immigrant Trumpist wing is, don’t you dare bring those dangerous foreigners here. Evacuate them, sure, but dump them somewhere else. Trump, in his usual, fact-free way, insists Biden is admitting an unknown number of terrorists.

Annie Karni writes (New York Times):

The unusual split is pitting traditional conservatives, who are more inclined to defend those who have sacrificed for America, against the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee wing of the party. And it is a fresh test of Mr. Trump’s power to make Republican leaders fall in line behind him.

“The core divide within the Republican Party, post-Trump, is on immigration,” said Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster. “The Republican Party used to be the party of immigration, and Trump changed all of that.”

The debate highlights the larger ideological divide within the party between “America First” isolationists like Mr. Trump and Republicans who believe maintaining strong alliances and America’s influence abroad benefits the country’s security.

Former Trump adviser and noted xenophobe Stephen Miller believes the party would come together to oppose Afghan resettlement in the U.S.:

“There’s an enormous amount of agreement among conservatives that there is no desire among the American public at all for a large-scale resettlement of generalized refugees,” he said.

With right-wing hosts on Fox News like Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson aligning with the anti-refugee wing of the party, Ms. Longwell, the Republican strategist, said that “the open question” was whether Republican sentiment that America was morally obligated to help Afghan allies “diminishes after two weeks.”

“Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan?” Ms. Ingraham said on her prime-time cable news show last week.

“Potentially” does a lot of work in Trump’s circles, as in potential voter fraud. (Also weasel phrases such as may be, might be, and possibly.)

Stuart Stevens (“It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump“), the former Republican political consultant, reminded Twitter how new immigrants actually blend into American society.

Ask son of a Syrian immigrant, Steve Jobs.