One cannot read the mind of Donald Trump. It is assumed that he wants to be president but is he, like Lindsey Graham, running simply to advance a policy position? Graham's message is the country needs a stronger defense posture and Trump's appears to be the country need fewer foreign imports and fewer foreign workers. When the Donald told Chuck Todd that all illegal immigrants had to go he staked out the boldest and most courageous position the GOP could possibly take. Expect all hell to break loose when those remarks are reported later today but when all is said and done Trump will have moved the GOP's position dramatically to the right and to a position from which retreat is all but impossible. Yes, Jeb Bush and John Kasich can sputter and fume but considering that Trump's polling numbers in some polls is double their combined totals to little avail. They will eventually issue voluminous position papers which no one will ever read as they try to maintain relevancy because that's what politicians do but Trump owns that position and like it or not so will the Republican Party. Should Trump eventually flame out as expected he will have succeeded in his mission because Cruz, Walker, and others will find it to their benefit to hold that red line.
Expect unmitigated joy from Democrats, the Hillary camp, and the Washington media. Trump has just ceded the Hispanic vote. So what? Unless the Democrats can turn out the black vote with the intensity it did in 2008 and 2012 without Obama on the ticket winning the Hispanic vote is meaningless. The elections of 2010 and 2014 suggest they cannot. In the most recent election Democrats carried 90 plus percent of the black vote in both Maryland and Illinois but it was a small black vote and at the end of the evening both states had done the unthinkable and elected Republican governors. A low black voter turnout also figured in Michelle Nunn's defeat in Georgia. Republicans do not have to carry the black vote they simply have to make black voters angry enough to stay home as Romney, with the help of Chris Christie, did to white Republican voters in 2012.
News flash! Black neighborhoods are not bastions of liberalism. Blacks may be loyal Democrats but intuitively they are more conservative than many whites. Yes, those who need EBT cards and Obama phones will be there on election day but many will not.
When I was 12 years old I carried papers in a black neighborhood. After these many years I'm still in contact with two or three of the kids I met then. Although it's risky to extrapolate too much from the few opinions I glean from conversations with these men I think it's accurate to say open borders and gay marriage are not winning issues amongst the brothers and they are not reticent to give Obama credit for advancing them. If they stay home on election day do not attribute their absence to apathy. Quite the opposite! Even I was a bit surprised when my wife got a call from the wife of one of those men who does mentoring work in his church. She wanted to know what radio station Rush Limbaugh was on. The Democratic Party is so beholden to black voters it needs to win 90% of a heavy black vote to win.
Yes, but the Hispanic vote? The all important Hispanic! The Republicans will lose it. If Hispanics wanted to control national elections than they should have migrated more homogeneously. In the 2012 elections the Hispanic vote was pivotal in only 4 states; Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico for a total of 49 electoral votes. Had Romney carried all 4 of those states, which he did not, he would have still lost. It was the white vote that eluded Romney.
If Trump's real mission is to change the direction of the Republican Party on immigration he has probably already won.
Very insightful.
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