George Will: Trump’s immigration plan could spell doom for the GOP

Washington Post ^ | 08/22/2015 | George Will

[SeekAndFind]

It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government’s size and coercive powers.

Most of Donald Trump’s normally loquacious rivals are swaggeringly eager to confront Vladimir Putin but are too invertebrate — Lindsey Graham is an honorable exception — to voice robust disgust with Trump and the spirit of, the police measures necessary for and the cruelties that would accompany his policy. The policy is: “They’ve got to go.”

“They,” the approximately 11.3 million illegal immigrants (down from 12.2 million in 2007), have these attributes: Eighty-eight percent have been here at least five years. Of the 62 percent who have been here at least 10 years, about 45 percent own their own homes. About half have children who were born here and hence are citizens. Dara Lind of Vox reports that at least 4.5 million children who are citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.

Trump evidently plans to deport almost 10 percent of California’s workers and 13 percent of that state’s K-12 students. He is, however, at his most Republican when he honors family values: He proposes to deport intact families, including children who are citizens. “We have to keep the families together,” he says, “but they have to go.” Trump would deport everyone, then “have an expedited way of getting them [“the good ones”; “when somebody is terrific”] back.” Big Brother government will identify the “good” and “terrific” from among the wretched refuse of other teeming shores.

[dennisw]

ping

[LS]

And that’s a bad thing because? If it won’t stand for something, who needs the party . . . or Will.

[DH]

“Trump’s immigration plan could spell doom for the GOP”

---

No, they have already doomed themselves into obscurity by morphing into the Democrat party.

The “liberal disease” and the uncontrollable urge to “go along to get along” has killed the party. Their only supporters now are the ones getting favors from them.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: I have never figured out why people think, or thought, George Will was smart.

Well, he’s one of the few pundits who wears those professorial glasses, and he likes to use big words.... :)

[jmaroneps37]

My Dad taught me to never trust a guy in a bow tie - he was so right.

[NYCslicker]

I mean, his way of thinking is entirely appropriate . . . to the political landscape of 30 years ago when conservatives were fighting with Democrats who many were also conservative. But he is vastly out of touch and ineffectual in the current landscape.