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Trump Softens on Immigration, Coulter Follows Suit
My slight edit of Coulter’s book cover.
Talk about bad timing. Wednesday night at the Breitbart Embassy in DC, Ann Coulter held a book signing for In God We Trus… oops, I mean In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome. Earlier that day, Donald Trump told Sean Hannity that he was “softening” his position on immigration, the main issue that made Coulter and a plurality of primary voters select him as the GOP nominee. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that confab.
Coulter’s book makes the argument that “[T]here’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies.” On MSNBC’s “Hardball” she said, “This could be the shortest book tour ever if he’s really softening his position on immigration.” So there’s absolutely no way the passionately anti-immigration author could support her candidate’s flip-flop, right? Sorry, but we’ve got books to move:
Conservative author and Donald Trump supporter Ann Coulter isn’t giving up on her candidate yet, even as he appears to be shifting on an issue most dear to her.
Trump is now open to possibly “softening” his hardline stance on illegal immigration, and the candidate said Wednesday night on Fox News that he would consider letting many illegal immigrants remain in the country, instead of deporting them all.
…In an interview earlier that same day with the Washington Examiner, Coulter, whose own stance on immigration inspired Trump’s controversial views on it, said it’s not worrying her.
“It mostly worries me rhetorically … I mean, what to do with the illegals already here was never really a big part of it,” she said. “We’re getting a wall. We’re definitely getting a wall. That’s the one thing we know about a Trump presidency.”
She said Trump still offers more than any of the other Republicans had.
“I don’t think it is a change in policy,” she said of Trump. “The policy is anyone who’s here illegally is here illegally, does not have the right to be here. We’ll decide whether it’s in our interest to let them stay or not. Perhaps it is in our interest to let some of them stay.“
Yep, “we’re definitely getting a wall.” Trump would never backtrack on a core campaign promise.
Published in General
If you have a strong Congress and Supreme Court, that isn’t necessarily the worst strategy for a president.
But it’s a big if.
National Review, The Weekly Standard, and yes, Ricochet.com, play the same game when they say they are in favor of immigration enforcement, but then support anti-enforcement Republicans.
Does Jon Gabriel favor a victory for John McCain in his August 30 primary?
Not to be dismissive or contrarian, but @claire recent specific quoting of Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here comes to mind about supporters defending equivocations. And, no, I don’t think Trump is Hitler.
“Now listen, Dad. You don’t understand Senator Windrip. Oh, he’s something of a demagogue–he shoots off his mouth a lot about how he’ll jack up the income tax and grab the banks, but he won’t–that’s just molasses for the cockroaches. What he will do, and maybe only he can do it, is to protect us from the murdering, thieving, lying Bolsheviks that would–why, they’d like to stick all of us that are going on this picnic, all the decent clean people that are accustomed to privacy, into hall bedrooms, and make us cook our cabbage soup on a Primus stuck on a bed! Yes, or maybe ‘liquidate’ us entirely! No sir, Berzelius Windrip is the fellow to balk the dirty sneaking Jew spies that pose as American Liberals!”
NeverTrump is not lacking for data points. There’s a larger uncommitted electorate out there desperately in search of a candidate. That’s the target.
Principles aren’t on the ballot this year. As the election approaches, I expect some NeverTrumpers to consider taking part in it. If Trump’s policies evolve toward conservative positions, I would expect some NeverTrumpers to consider the nose plugs.
I don’t realize that. Unless the argument is that Trump has no actual opinions on topics like this, and is therefore prone to saying nonsense at any given moment.
I don’t see how that reflects better on him though.
Can we move beyond the history yet? Jindal & Walker were my top picks, I later adopted Cruz & Rubio. I argued enthusiastically against Trump for many months on Ricochet (look it up-or, I’ll provide links if you’d like). Since then, I made an adjustment to the new reality. I don’t think more highly of Trump than I did then. But there isn’t a doubt about which outcome I prefer in November because one of the outcomes has the potential to shut conservatism out of the public square for good.
Most of this other stuff is small ball. We already know about Trump’s character flaws, etc. and honestly, who cares what Coulter says?
It just doesn’t seem plausible that Coulter, Hannity, Ingraham, Mike Gallagher, etc.’s of the world could not foresee that Donald Trump would be a very weak(to put it mildly)general election Republican Candidate for President.
The 2016 Presidential election will go down as the most astonishing case of Republicans grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory that ever was or ever will be. Our children and our children’s children (…could have said grandchildren, but that sounded cooler…) will look back in wonder at how this Trump thing ever happened
My answer will be that it was like watching a car accident in slow motion where you see it all happening before your eyes and you’re making every effort to yell and tell the people to dive out of the way, but in the end there was not a damn thing you could do about it except gird your loins and take the hit.
That ain’t workin’
That’s the way you do it.
Money for nothin’
and you’re chicks for free.
As long as Southern States (Georgia, Florida, and California specifically) rely heavily on Agrarian profits, you will never see any sort of meaningful immigration reform.
NeverTrump is based in an objection to a total lack of coherent policy. This shift is further demonstration that policy, and principle, mean little to Trump.
So the shift is now NeverEverTrump.
On behalf of the South I object to being lumped in with California.
We have some class, thank you.
You all seem to be forgetting that eternal truth which wipes away all sin trump has. The reason he never needs to confess. trump fights!
The very idea that NeverTrump voters base their anti-Trump feelings on his immigration policies demonstrates your ignorance of our reasons. The major problem is not his stated policies which, as Jim Geraghty pointed out, all come with an expiration date, but rather his total unfitness for the office of President of the United States for reasons of character, honesty, intelligence, experience, knowledge….Need I go on? In fact, his only salient qualification is that he is running against someone who is just as bad or, perhaps, a bit worse. For NeverTrump people that is sufficient reason to remain on the sidelines in the presidential vote.
Damn it. I KNEW I should have qualified California as not part of the South. Sometimes brevity isn’t king.
If conservatism can be shut out for good, then it ain’t worth warm spit.
Okay, let’s reboot to #26, in which I made a substantive point and you responded to it with a diversion. You know fully well what Krikorian’s position is, and what I meant. Please acknowledge or refute:
Krikorian’s position is that Obama is more or less doing it right on immigration?
Well, history tends to provide context and can be very instructive. Early in Obama’s presidency, Trump spoke at a gathering and articulated that it would be literally impossible to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Then he ran for the Republican nomination and pushed for the mass deportation that he historically dismissed. What conclusions can we draw from that? Perhaps that he had absolutely no intention to engage in mass deportation at all but was just exciting a contingent of Americans who justifiably were frustrated that illegal immigration had gotten out of control and that the Obama administration was turning a blind eye to sanctuary cities and actually doing battle with states like Arizona to hamstring them from securing their own borders?
Can this historical example be applied to other Trump promises/threats? How about his threat that he will force corporations like Apple to manufacture iPhones and other devices here in America? A threat to gin up support from blue-collar workers perhaps struggling to find work? After a while…a pattern starts to appear. It’s clear to me that that threat will also be watered down if not disappear altogether.
When you have a nominee of little principle who is not terribly well-read or insightful then policies are apt to change frequently leaving once ardent supporters high and dry. Today, immigration…tomorrow repealing Obamacare instead of just tampering a little with it…or overruling any attempt by a Republican House to dismantle it and replace it with a more market-driven solution.
As for Ms. Coulter – my understanding is that she often sells millions of copies of her book and has a very devoted following. So, being dismissive of her impact in influencing public opinion probably isn’t correct…particularly when she is wrong on a given topic.
Apparently, NeverTrump voters aren’t quite as monolithic as you
thinkfeel, unless you care to take issue with one of your brothers-in-arms in #40.I’m not much for these political books but there’s just something about Ann’s books that I really like…
I doubt it. Passions, once aroused, make their demands on us.
So on the basis of this prediction or calculation you prefer Hilary? What of your border hawkishness then? You seriously expect Trump to open the borders more than she does?
Say he does “betray” us. As badly as she will? Phooey.
John McCain now up 55-29 in his primary, and the conservative media has not done a damn thing to oppose him. Please Rich Lowry, spare me a bunch of 2017 Corner posts in which you fulminate against McCain for helping pass a huge amnesty.
bah….too skinny.
I’ll remember that you like thicker books come Christmas.
[sorry for the massive surgery to your comment. I’m a Coolidge, after all]
I hear you, brother. He’s unreliable. He might well betray us. All of that should be factored in when we contemplate the future. Then, anyone who is compelled to profess their view to thousands of readers should also cast a private ballot in the binary choice that the country is deciding this fall.
I’ve posted on the bigger picture a number of times, although I don’t recall your visiting the comments. Too bad. Those conversations might have been enlightening all the way around.
Profound. Have I heard that somewhere before or did you come up with it?
Quite right. Those who won’t support Trump are motivated by a host of reasons. To be fair though, there are so many reasons not to support him.
What a surprise. Hey, but at least he still “fights!”
Opposing Trump on immigration was never the main conservative objection to Trump. I don’t like that Rubio joined the Gang of Eight. The problem I had with Trump was I couldn’t understand why anyone expected Trump to be trustworthy in a way that Rubio was not. And now we have the truth. We could have had a candidate who was sane, competent, but not entirely trustworthy, but instead we have a candidate who is incompetent, insane, and also untrustworthy.
Jon Gabriel – “Until the GOP proves its honorable intentions on immigration…”
Whatever that means.