The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, better known as Simpson-Mizzoli for its Senate and House authors, was a fully bipartisan piece of legislation. Authored by a Kentucky Democrat in the House and a Wyoming Republican in the Senate, The bill passed with solid majorities in both chambers and was dutifully signed by Ronald Reagan. It offered a path to citizenship for 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, while promising stiff penalties to employers who knowingly hired workers without credentials. Previously underground residents who had been in the US since before 1982 were given legal status, subject to payment of a fine, back taxes and a criminal background check. Moreover, agricultural workers and other seasonal employees depended on by various industries were granted legal status as well, in line with their employment routines. In other words the law reflected a wide variety of viewpoints and interests, and at the end of the day demonstrated the critical utility of compromise to address a complicated problem. By no means perfect – it kicked concerns about future immigrants overstaying their visas, which haunt us to this day, down the road – the law still represented the type of good faith efforts from both sides of the aisle now unimaginable by the most ardent optimist.
Indeed, Simpson-Mazzoli is an apt point of departure to consider just how deep we have sunk in our ability to govern ourselves. It also illustrates how dishonest the Fox/AM driven narrative that today’s GOP/conservative priorities are driven by fidelity to the Reagan Revolution, and how disingenuous it is to constantly brandish his sensibilities on the full range of challenges the country faces. Nothing lurches further from the truth, and to accept such nonsense merely exhibits either woeful ignorance or overt dishonesty. As the current government shutdown extends into its second week, Simpson-Mazzoli might as well have been a hundred years ago, so currently AWOL are the essential variables that made it possible.
It’s a safe bet Reagan, like the other former Presidents who survive him, would have loathed Trump. The simpering braggadocio, the parchment skin and juvenile attacks on opponents, the constant stream of lies; but most of all Reagan would have despised the Donald’s insincerity, his total refusal to proceed with any set of convictions past his own self-adulation. Of course, it was always absurd that Reagan, who limped away from his second term near completely addled by the dementia clinically diagnosed just a couple of years later, and a full blown scandal he never cleared up, would be canonized as the past glory and future light of the GOP. Yet and still, it is certain whatever qualities the Republican faithful embraced in him are not offered by Trump in even trace amounts. Like most all surrounding the GOP’s deification of Reagan in the first place, it’s all a figment of Rush and Mark Levin’s imagination, an expedient lie evolved by the necessity a scarcity of alternatives creates. After all, “the party of Reagan” sounds a lot better than the “party of Cheney” or “the party of Jesse Helms!”
Common sense dictates any organization’s best plan for strengthening itself focuses on increasing membership. Surely nothing Reagan ever said publicly about the GOP’s prospects took issue with a “big tent” approach to Republican vitality. Trump’s tweetstorms, spun and refined by Fox/AM’s endless parade of LifeLock hawkers, reflects a 180 degree different set of priorities. The lion’s share of air time revolves around who isn’t fit for membership in their exclusive club. When all is said and done, only Christian evangelicals in the Robert Jeffrees mode, NRA and Pro-Life fanatics, blue collar opponents of all things government, not to mention political correctness (read bigots), and unapologetic high income job creators need apply. Everyone else can exchange happy holiday greetings and go jump in a coal-slurried creek. It’s not a tent, it’s a lean to… and space is limited.
That nobody in this Ingrahamian orbit seems to understand and/or care that the President visits this well of wretched grievance on the hour only because his political survival, indeed even personal freedom, depends on it, and not due to a whiff of allegiance for the health of either the GOP or nation, only reinforces its self-destructive insularity. Parties in thrall of the likes of Steve King, Jim Jordon and Louie Gohmert don’t reflect much on motives or even false purposes, they simply want to know others are as whack as they are; as the song noted, feeling good is good enough.
Where this leads has more to do with how far the rest of us tolerate the daily malice emanating from a party in full descent. American politics is defined within a Blue said/Red said paradigm. This grants credibility to whatever is produced for no other reason than it requires a response, and once that response is given, the statement it parried is legitimized as worthy of an answer. Nothing can simply be ignored as beneath attention, or not up to snuff for discussion. Thus, more than 7000 Trump lies are addressed, which provides enough credibility for plenty of people to dispute they were lies in the first place… Catch-22 for the meme age!
It currently seems clear Republicans have no idea how to confront the affliction they suffer. Right now they appear content to deny it is an ill at all, instead pretending what emanates by the hour from the White House living quarters can simply be ignored as an endearing eccentricity from a POTUS “with his own way of doing things.” November clarified the folly of that view, but it seems that wasn’t painful enough. What will do the trick is a work in progress. Impeachment? Robust House Committee investigative work? Mueller? Full electoral repudiation in 2020, leaving only the most extreme elements of the party still employed? Who knows? Right now they are like compulsive gamblers still at the blackjack table come sunrise, house money exhausted hours ago, the nest egg now starting to be tapped. Problem? What problem? I’m having a blast!
Most every House Republican voice not fully wedded to Trumpism either retired or was asked to leave at the beginning of last month. They most recently fell in lock step with Trump’s nasty futility and passed an immigration package they knew was DOA in the Senate, abetting a government shutdown, as senseless as it was mean-spirited. Some did it out of abject cowardice, but most voted yea because they prefer the role of not actually having to govern, instead simply preening for Fox/AM and next cycle’s primary voters, and looking for loose change from the Adelson money float, like beads on Fat Tuesday.
Few feel inclined to take on Trump because few feel obliged to much other than reflecting the nihilist knee jerks of their constituents; that would require character they never possessed and surely has not been demanded by those who elected them. Wretched core qualifications are slight and do not change, ugly white grievance and resentment always butters the bread.
More and more there is a feeling of inevitability about impeachment. Anybody who doubts this vibe need only look for similarities of the current death spiral that characterizes this White House lately and Nixon’s final days. Trump feels terminal; certainly there is zero evidence of any 2019 governing agenda. Moreover, there is a tangible sensation of abandonment that leaves Trump totally isolated, alone in his desperation about Mueller and coming House oversight. Anything past day-to-day chaos in service to his immediate survival seems a bridge too far at this juncture. That doesn’t mean the GOP won’t keep carrying his water until some smoking gun revelation or attrition tipping point is finally reached, it’s what moorless entities do, but functional cooperation on policy priorities is over. This isn’t just lame duck… it’s dead man walking. As ever, the peril we all now face is how long that last mile takes to cover, and how much damage America and the world suffer in the meantime. BC