These people are not conservatives

 MAGA has a challenge based on a paradox. It is at least as purist a movement as any flavor of either progressivism or conservatism, but, given its intrinsic incoherence, it must try to define what it wants to be pure about in terms of stomping into the dust anyone who deviates the first micro-inch from its jumbled set of orthodoxies. In short, it makes more clear what it's against than what it's for.

It also, by its nature, operates in the short term.  It can't conceive of any kind of principles that would guide it through, say, the next century. 

Nothing sparks its hatred like public recognition of anyone's actual conservative bona fides who ever obstructed anything about its "program."

As you know, Mitch McConnell has announced he will step down as the Senate GOP leader in November. Now, I have my share of real frustrations with McConnell. Shortly after having given a floor speech in which he placed the moral culpability for January 6 on Donald. Trump, he told an interviewer with a great deal of certainty in his tone that he'd vote for Trump if Trump were the GOP nominee.

But, sitting out here in the hinterland as I am, I'm sure I don't appreciate all the factors McConnell has to balance every day in his role. And the fact is, he steered a lot of legislation through his chamber that advanced conservative causes. And he was primarily responsible for getting three great Supreme Court nominees approved during the otherwise unfortunate administration of the Very Stable Genius.

Here's how the ate-up yay-hoos are framing McConnell's legacy:

Jeremy Carl

@realJeremyCarl

McConnell was a cancer on the GOP and the most unpopular national political figure for many years. He hasn't died and there's no reason to sugarcoat his legacy.

Carl is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, which at one time was an exemplary think thank. It was founded by the west coast Straussian Harry V. Jaffa. But it has pretty much gone all in for MAGA-ism.

How about this charmer from a group of currently-serving federal lawmakers?

House Freedom Caucus

@freedomcaucus

Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine).  

No need to wait till November… Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.

What's the main thing that leaps out at you in each of these tweets?

Is it not the utter lack of grace? The refusal, or perhaps incapacity, to consider any kind of context?

Matt Vespa, one of the most toxic columnists at that sewer of MAGA-ism, Townhall, has a piece today - sorry, not giving it any linky love - on the occasion of Liz Cheney on yesterday's Supreme Court decision that throws a wrench in Jack Smith's ability to move his cases against Trump forward. The whole piece is an attempt to portray her as an irrelevant laughingstock. At one point his poses the question of how does someone in deep-red Wyoming lose the state's House seat? He doesn't answer his own question, but the piece is pregnant with the clear implication: She saw Trump's behavior on January 6 as disqualifying him from further participation in America politics. Her voting record in Congress was as conservative as you can get. She was elected conference chair when she was only in her second term. Hell, she voted with Trump's preferences 93 percent of the time.  She had a reputation for policy chops. 

But she crossed the MAGA red line. 

Let us also bear in mind that to Trump, his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, is now "braindead."

The drool-besotted throne-sniffers have completely taken over the Republican Party, which is why I'm staying home in May and November. 

I won't have any truck with a movement based on pure meanness. 

 

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Border thoughts

 I recently discussed this issue here, with a focus on Mitch McConnell's we-don't-want-to-undermine-Trump remark. That quickly became an angle - to a significant degree, legitimately so - that those inclined to reflexively put Republicans in the worst possible light used to understandable advantage.

There was no completed Senate bill at the time. Now that there is one, it's possible to make a more concrete assessment of where things stand.

The bill's principal architect, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma (working with Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut and independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona), feels like it's a good combination of teeth and humanity:

“Even if President Biden will not admit it, this is a crisis. We must secure our border now. It cannot wait any longer.

“Americans are not opposed to legal and orderly immigration, but they are tired of the chaos and abuse at our border. I am happy to announce, we have finally finished strong bill text to add to the supplemental funding bill. Though most members of the Senate have already been briefed on the contents of the bill, the final text will be distributed to members of the Senate soon and posted online within a day.

“The border security bill will put a huge number of new enforcement tools in the hands of a future administration and push the current Administration to finally stop the illegal flow. The bill provides funding to build the wall, increase technology at the border, and add more detention beds, more agents, and more deportation flights. The border security bill ends the abuse of parole on our southwest border that has waived in over a million people. It dramatically changes our ambiguous asylum laws by conducting fast screenings at a higher standard of evidence, limited appeals, and fast deportation."

“New bars to asylum eligibility will stop the criminal cartels from exploiting our currently weak immigration laws. The bill also has new emergency authorities to shut down the border when the border is overrun, new hiring authorities to quickly increase officers, and new hearing authorities to quickly apply consequences for illegal crossings. It changes our border from catch and release to detain and deport.

A main point of contention for those opposed to the bill is that it apparently has a tripwire number of 5,000 illegal crossings a day that would automatically close the border. 

That seems pretty leaky. It would only take ten days of such numbers to equal the population of the city where I live, and 100 days to equal the population of several major US metropolises. 

But it's also moot, given that that number has been exceeded a lot lately:

If the proposal were passed into law, the new authority could be triggered almost immediately, given that border encounters topped 10,000 on some days during December, which was the highest month on record for illegal crossings. 

 But there's a ludicrous amount of good faith packed into this bill:

The bill’s authors would have you believe that after immigrants have traveled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars to enter the United States illegally, they will voluntarily surrender to ICE for deportation. It is a fantasy. All immigrants released into the U.S. under the “noncustodial removal proceeding” will disappear into the country forever. Biden will not lift a finger to track them down. He certainly hasn’t so far. He is utterly untrustworthy on this.

And good old subsidization:

The legislation also includes billions of dollars of spending to bail out local governments and nongovernmental organizations so they can continue to provide housing, food, clothing, education, and healthcare for immigrants.

Matthew Continetti makes the point that Biden has legitimate executive authority to act right now, without an unwieldy Congressional bill.  It's more legitimate authority than that which he's used for a number of matters, immigration-related and beyond:

Biden didn’t say he required congressional approval when, on his first day in office, he reversed his predecessor’s order to exclude illegal immigrants from the Census Bureau’s calculations for congressional reapportionment; insulated Dreamers from legal challenges; ended restrictions on entry into the United States for citizens of nations deemed a national security risk; paused deportations; stopped construction of the border wall; and extended the ability of Liberian immigrants to remain in the United States.

Nor did Biden say he required congressional approval when he ended his predecessor’s Remain in Mexico policy; first tried to halt Title 42 authority to remove illegal migrants deemed a public health risk; and expanded presidential parole to admit more than 1 million migrants to the United States.

Biden didn’t go to Congress when he extended the pandemic eviction moratorium. Or when he announced a blatantly unconstitutional workplace vaccine mandate. Or when he revived an egregiously expansive interpretation of the Clean Water Rule. Or when he erased $400 billion in student loans.

True, the courts tossed out the eviction moratorium, vaccine mandate, EPA overreach, and the initial student loan forgiveness plan. If Biden assumes that the courts also would intervene on the border, then he should say so. The point is that Biden’s self-imposed limitations on executive authority have appeared only when the issue is illegal migration.

And then there's the matter of bundling border-policy legislation with with foreign policy. In a sane universe, aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel would be handled on a stand-alone basis (and passed without difficulty).

I'm inclined to think this bill has too many shortcomings to warrant support. But then again, what the hell are we going to do at this late date? 

Ukraine needs ammunition more than ever, given Putin's amassing of 40.000 troops and 500 tanks for a fresh drive into Kupyansk within the month.  Not to mention all kinds of other materiel. 

So the bill is just another example of how post-America cobbles together feeble measures to address its threats in lieu of a strategic vision that would guide us and give a unified sense of why the hell we're doing anything we're doing.