Republican Politics Is Just Trolling, and People Seeking the American Dream Are Just Their Favorite Props
"DeSantis has all the right people upset," Laura Ingraham said on her Fox News show Tuesday night, thereby laying out the basis for his inevitable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. That's all it is. That's why the Florida Governor has embraced the stunt politics of Donald Trump, the trolling aesthetic as a political platform. Never has its triumph in Republican politics been more apparent than with the new contest between RONALD and Texas Governor Greg Abbott around who can be the bigger asshole to immigrants and asylum-seekers—and make the silly liberals mad in the process.
DeSantis is the leader in the clubhouse after flying 48 Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha's Vineyard using state funds, allegedly under false pretenses, even though they were warmly received on the tony island when they arrived. (And never mind that this incident is now the subject of at least one criminal investigation and the people used in this stunt have filed a class-action lawsuit citing RONALD by name.) The notion that the libs might be mad that American governors are treating human beings like cattle, not that immigrants are arriving in blue states, is immaterial to the trolls. Libs mad!
And who can blame Fox News for dining out on this, even if reality did not cooperate with their vision of limousine liberals throwing tomatoes at people who just want a chance at a better life for themselves and their children? What else are they supposed to talk about, the national abortion ban Republicans are pushing? Their non-existent plan to fight inflation? Their plan to transform American infrastructure in response to the climate crisis? (Stop chuckling in the back.) The sad fact is that there is no Republican platform beyond lashing out at The Other. They can't fix immigration—with a plan that might include systematically relocating some people to blue states—because they need it as a cudgel. It is the number-one animating issue for The Base.
The fix would involve making it less insane to come here legally and more orderly when people arrive. (Give people a chance to just come here like so many generations have before! Hire more immigration judges to ease the logjam! Build more housing to accommodate people desperate for a chance at the American Dream, including American citizens who are already here! You can cry and wail all you want; people are going to keep coming.) But as usual, the most recent former president dropped all their pretenses and drastically cut legal immigration. It's about stopping Those People from coming.
Now you can find Marco Rubio on Fox News this morning smearing the Martha's Vineyard asylum-seekers as "illegal" immigrants. They applied to stay here legally and are waiting for their asylum claims to be adjudicated by an American court of law. By the way, these are people who hail from a country, in Venezuela, that these same Republicans consider a failed state with an irredeemable government. They sound like perfect candidates for the asylum program, much like the Cuban refugees who've long come here seeking a new chance at freedom and prosperity. So why the lies and the dehumanization? Here's a fun game: when was the last time you heard a Republican presidential hopeful talk about people coming here looking to work hard and provide a better life for their families? When was the last time you heard a right-wing bigwig mention anything other than criminality? Does Venezuela even have MS-13?
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