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Kaus on Trump: “We Don’t Want Your … Comprehensive Immigration Reform”
Mickey Kaus was a guest today on the Harvard Lunch Club political podcast. What follows are some notes on his remarks.
Regarding Donald Trump’s provocative suggestion that we should at least temporarily ban the entry of all Muslims into the United States, as either immigrants or tourists, Mickey Kaus, the purveyor of the wildly popular kausfiles.com, said on this week’s edition of the Harvard Lunch Club Political Podcast that while he did not support the idea (it was “over-broad”) it was nevertheless not unconstitutional, and further:
…when you think about it, do we want to admit people who believe the opposite of the American way of life? Not Muslims but let’s hypothesize some other religion, some evil religion, the Voldemort religion or something. They’re nihilists, they don’t believe in free speech, they don’t believe in democracy, and they believe in causing a lot of destruction. Would we let in those people? No. So it’s obviously okay to have some kind of thought test. Our assimilation is not so good that we can take people that violently disagree with us and mold them into model Americans. It’s not going to happen.
Given that, it seems it would be reasonable for Trump to say people who are radical jihadists, who believe in waging war against the US, we don’t want them in the country. That doesn’t apply to most Muslims, but let’s see. Let’s ask what the percentage is.
Mr. Kaus, who ran for the US Senate in California as a Democrat in 2010, describes himself as a neo-liberal. Nevertheless, he has a lot of cachet with the right and is, it is fair to say, an independent thinker.
About the outcry from just about every reporter and political voice in the nation that Trump’s plan was an abomination, Kaus said “they’re right to be allergic to religious tests.” Still, in response to recent surveys that show, for instance, that significant fractions of Muslims in the Islamic world (Pakistan 76%, Afghanistan 79%, Turkey 17%, Iraq 42%) believe that the penalty for leaving Islam should be death, Kaus notes that “Trump is … giving the lie to the fact that all religions are alike, [to the fact that] we can tolerate the intolerant … that’s actually not true. If we get enough people here who are intolerant, we’re going to have an intolerant country.”
As for the source of the vehemence in the commentariat and especially among the GOP establishment, presidential candidates, and spokesmen, Kaus observed:
The main underlying current is that they wanted to stop Trump all along and it’s getting late – so they’re getting desperate.
In the context of stopping Trump, Kaus wrote a fascinating post titled “Why Doesn’t the GOP Elite Give Up on Amnesty?” where he argued that if the elites really wanted to stop Trump, “all they would have to do is cave on what we call amnesty and what they call comprehensive immigration reform.” He has suggested that the “molten core of the Trump eruption” is anger over the elite plans for more immigration:
Today, Trump’s massive rallies can be interpreted as an expression of the historic populist undercurrent animating America’s white working class. Or they can be interpreted, with less sophistication, as Americans saying, as loudly as they can, “We don’t want your [expletive] ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform.’”
…So why don’t Haley Barbour and Karl Rove call a big K Street meeting where they say, “Boys, we have to throw the damn yahoos this bone. We’re giving up on amnesty”?
As noted above, Mr. Kaus (who, by the way has two Harvard degrees – one from the college and one from the Law School – a perfect fit for the Harvard Lunch Club Political podcast!) views himself as some kind of liberal, despite some rather distinctly conservative ideas. In that context, Kaus, noting that Trump has had many ideas (his defense of entitlements, for instance) which are considered Democratic positions, spoke passionately about the need for New Deal-era programs in an age of massive economic dislocation of all kinds. And, specifically with regard to Trump, Kaus said:
He’s giving the lie to the idea … that it’s incompatible to take sensible parts of conservatism and wed them to a lot of all the sensible parts of liberalism … and I think he is doing that bizarrely in the process of seeming to be wildly extreme.
On the whole, it was a fascinating discussion with a very thoughtful guy. Check out the whole thing.
Published in General
Oddly, I believe Mickey Kaus and Anne Coulter are good friends. He is reliably liberal except on immigration, I think, where he argues that the only way to improve the fortunes of those on the bottom of the ladder is through a tight labor market.
I think Kaus’s idea is a good start. As long as republicans keep up the amnesty push, and I am using amnesty as in there is no penalty for being in the country illegally, Trump will have a platform to connect to 1/5 – 1/3 of the voters. Not enough to win, but enough to cause disarray.
Immigration isn’t, of itself, the real issue. It is that the U.S. no longer has any borders of any meaningful kind, and has extended an open invitation to all but Christians to enjoy the fruits of Judeo-Christianity, the source of American self-control, until the fruit basket is empty, moral corruption is in total control, and immigration by natural selection takes over.
That is, let the good times roll until America becomes such an undesirable rat hole that even Calcutta is better than the travel inconvenience to get to America.
Everyone understands that Mickey Kaus is against immigration because he correctly views it as damaging to all the liberal sacred cows, right?
It needs to be broader then just “jihadists”. The key is a desire for Sharia. Anyone who supports Sharia should be unwelcome in the United States.
It’s all one big negotiation. This time with the electorate mostly. There is a large current of anti-Islam feeling, but not large enough to be a winner. My bet is that after awhile Trump comes back to the meat of the distribution curve and starts qualifying the position to start picking up people who aren’t simply outraged by any hint of restrictions. Because no one on the other side of the position is moving to pick up those voters. The field is open to him.
Really enjoyed listening to Mickey Kaus when he co-hosted a podcast on Ricochet. Of course he really had to fight to get a word in edgewise.
Well, Nick, we let him get a lot of words in edgewise. So I’m sure you’ll enjoy our HLC podcast. (Please let us know what you think!).
I don’t know that much about his individual positions and learned as much about him from this post as I ever knew previously. I thought he was Ann Coulter’s ex-husband or something.
What is your take.
Mickey is what I consider an old-fashioned liberal who is not into identity politics and does not consider conservatives the devil. He is against immigration “reform” because of the damage it does to liberal values but what is most striking about that is that virtually no other liberals today have the same view. He’s also very funny.
Too many immigrants would be potentially an overburden on the welfare system and put downward pressure on low wages. Both things liberals don’t want to see happen and at least in the former case, Conservatives should welcome.
The thing is, if a bunch of people are going to come here and take welfare, it’s far more likely to cause the implosion of welfare than to cause a bunch of natives to want to increase taxes in order to pay for immigrant largess.
From Mickey a few hours ago:
Mike H and Mark – thanks for the responses.
I am not sure what to make of it though.
On immigration HRC is Chuck Shumer’s sister in the open border crusade. Bernie Sanders is somewhere close to Trump and says, as I understand both of you, that his concern is it creates and excess supply of labor and puts downward pressure on labor.
So who has the correct progressive (I don’t like using liberal because it has been contorted from its classical meaning) position? HRC or Bernie Sanders?
Immigration, in all aspects, is in fact the primary issue, by several leagues. I won’t belabor the point, but after you read Coulter’s latest, you’ll view Calcutta as a safe haven.
HRC. Bernie has been careful to downplay his views. I’ve raised it with a couple of his supporters and they simply don’t take it seriously as an issue even though it is clear their views are similar to Clinton’s not Bernie’s.
The source of the difference between HRC and Sanders is that Bernie is a socialist and thinking in economic terms (however flawed they may be) while Clinton is approaching it in political terms. In economic terms you can argue about the pros and cons and multifactoral variables but in political terms it’s a binary question – will the bulk of new immigrant citizens vote for Ds or Rs? As a political matter, which is how most Democrats think about it, the answer is self-evident – for Democrats. And that’s why they will always push for comprehensive reform aka “opening the floodgates”.
I think Sen. Sanders’s stated view on immigration is akin to Sen. Obama’s view on same-sex marriage: expedient (and everyone on his side knows it).
I think it’s different. Obama’s was a transparent move in the general election. Sander’s position does him no good in the primary campaign.
I think he has the core elements of a conservative but is by temperament a thoughtful liberal. The acid test is always, in my opinion, whether someone grasps the idea of the free market or not and Kaus definitely does (as becomes clear in the podcast). I always think that as soon as someone gets that there’s no such thing as a free lunch then I can talk to them.
Exactly what is conservative about wanting to see working people get screwed? Is conservatism only for employers? Does it have nothing to offer working class people but ever-lower wages? Is our message to working people, “It’s true you’ll be making less money, but at least you’ll be able to buy cheap Chinese stuff at Wal Mart.” Because if it is, we’d better get ready for at least four years of President Hillary Clinton.
I leave you with this:
The interesting thing is that after the GOPe has over the past decades developed the process of cave-in into an art form – they have finally found a topic on which they are intransigent.
Yeah, whoda ever thunk it?
They only cave Left, and to the Progressives, when the pressure is from their own base they fight like demons.
What do you mean by correct? They’re both correct to an extent, but I think Bernie wins for protecting Democratic interests. Yes, it’s more likely for immigrants to vote for democrats, but immigrants tend not to vote, and they only somewhat favor democrats.
On the other hand, the influx of a lot of low skilled immigrants would likely be the last nail in the coffin for the welfare state and they would want to raise the minimum wage even more than they do now to price immigrants out of the workforce. I don’t know how that would affect immigrant vote if they were given one. High levels of low skilled immigration would probably put the Democratic party in far more disarray than most of them (and Conservative) realize.
Obama’s move did him no good in his primary campaign either, but the Democrat base didn’t care because they knew he was lying. Similarly, the Democrat base doesn’t care about Sen. Sanders’s view on immigration because they know he is lying.
Since 9/11 America has accepted 1.5 million Muslim immigrants, doubling the number of Muslims in America before 9/11.
And America needed 1.5 million Muslim immigrants because…..?
In 2015 America had 225,000 new Muslim immigrants. There are currently 180,000 members of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Who exactly is going to be assimilating?
In 2015 white Christians lost majority status in the United States of America.
In 2012 the oldest political party in the US, the Democrats, basically wrote off white Christian men from their decades-old electoral coalition. The party became implicitly minority-run, socialist and pacifist. Immigration gave them the votes to do it.
Stop immigration now. Do not listen to the Judas-goats, dupes, fellow-travelers, running dogs, sell-outs, logic-choppers and dream weavers in service to the Third World Left.
If you think you’re under attack now for being privileged, what do you think life will be like for your children when whites are a despised minority?
Stop immigration now. Nothing else matters.