Donald Trump Isn’t Flipping on Immigration, He’s Just Flopping
If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s his immigration position. He’s talked about immigration more than any other issue. In fact, for months immigration was the only position listed on his campaign website. His plan is crystal clear.
If elected, Donald Trump will use a deportation force that will remove 11 million undocumented immigrants and their families in 18 months, ban Muslim immigrants from entering the United States, build a wall along the entire Mexico border, and make Mexico pay for it.
Donald Trump’s policy position has not changed. In fact, Trump’s immigration position listed on his website has not changed since being posted on his website. So why the fuss about Trump’s “softening” immigration rhetoric? Simple. He just put longtime Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway in charge of the day-to-day operations of his campaign.
And what Conway knows is that more Americans now support Hillary Clinton’s approach to immigration over Donald Trump.
For years, polling has shown that more Americans support the creation of a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants already living here in the United States than the mass deportation plan Trump and his white nativist base are peddling.
Now, as we approach Labor Day and the final stretch of the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump is losing a core constituency of the modern Republican Party: women and college educated whites.
In an analysis titled, “Trump’s Challenge: How to Sell Deportations To Suburban Swing Voters,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent captures the motivations behind Donald Trump’s supposed immigration policy “pivot.”
“The goal of his [Trump’s] new formula is to let the hard core Trumpist base know that he is fully committed to removing all undocumented immigrants, while simultaneously repackaging the process necessary to accomplish that end in a manner that is more acceptable to suburban swing voters.”
Sargent is right. Trump’s position hasn’t changed. It’s just been focus-grouped and repackaged.
The new talking point coming out of the Trump campaign is that Donald Trump will “enforce our existing laws.” It’s a statement first coined by Lou Dobbs who was kicked off CNN for spouting anti-immigrant extremist rhetoric to his nightly cable viewers, but we still hear it a lot from the white nationalist wing of the Republican Party. So what does it mean? It’s Republican code for mass deportation.
For people like Lou Dobbs, Steve King, Jeff Sessions, “enforcing our immigration laws” means millions of undocumented immigrants leaving the country.
The anti-immigrant hate group, FAIR’s, website goes so far as to claim, “If we enforce our laws and remove the incentives to remain here, many illegal aliens will go home on their own.” So for Trump’s anti-immigrant base whether the rhetoric calls for “mass deportation” or “mass self-deportation” the results are the same — millions of immigrants leaving the country against their will under incredibly harsh conditions. And judging by what’s happened in the past, this is a losing strategy.
Back in 2012, Mitt Romney made the same mistake. Days before the Iowa Caucus, Romney stood in front of a crowd of white caucus voters in Steve King’s (R-IA) district, Romney said he would veto the DREAM Act if it passed while he was President.
Romney took a hard anti-immigrant approach through the primaries. But rather than altering his unpopular policy position, Romney looked to rhetorically redefine his position as a kinder gentler “self-deportation.” Instead of persuading general election voters, Romney’s absurd position famously drew laughs from the presidential debate crowd.
Trump too is trying to play both sides. He’s not trying to pivot. Trump is trying to rebrand his wildly unpopular policy proposals. And, once again this approach won’t pass the laugh test.
