Republican former President Donald Trump won the Iowa caucus by 30%, leaving his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the dust…and setting a new record for victory margins in the Iowa Republican caucus.
Despite horrendous -28degC winter weather, Trump all but secured the Republican nomination. All other contenders will now drop out like flies, possibly as early as the New Hampshire primary next week. Either way, Trump will have it in the bag. As has been demonstrated over the past months, multiplex lawsuits and venomous tweets filled with disinformation have boosted, rather than broken, his ambition.
With few honorable exceptions, Republican Alice-in-Wonderland levitation from reality is meshing with Trump’s bumptious ego like Bentley clutch plates. He has a vision of America that even Hollywood at its Independence Day shoot-‘em-up best could not better. The Republican rich have no-one like Trump to reach the trailer trash, good ol’ boys and gun nuts, whose votes they need to preserve their power.
But the combination is dangerous stuff, at odds with the egalitarian principles of the Founding Fathers, whom the right wing are so fond of quoting. The danger of a second Trump president can be seen in the behaviour of the “Red States” already under Republican control.
Texas Governor Abbott is among MAGA Republicans are forcing the issue around immigration as a key line of attack on President Joe Biden in 2024, but while they are insisting immigration is so important, they will not agree to fund Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Abbott has spent more than $100 million bussing migrants, who are legally in the US, having applied for asylum, to Democrat-controlled Northern cities. To make this worse, Texas has stopped coordinating with charities there that could prepare for migrant arrivals.
On January 12th a woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande that marks the border between the U.S. and Mexico near Eagle Pass, Texas. US Border Patrol agents were told that a group of six migrants were in distress in the river but could not try to save them, as they normally would, because troops from the Texas National Guard and the Texas Military Department prevented the Border Patrol agents from entering the area where they were struggling.
Effectively, Texas forces have prevented US Border Patrol officials from performing their duties, asserting that Texas officials have power over US officials. This sets a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent.
“Texas cannot run its own immigration system. Its efforts intrude on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere with US foreign relations.”
—US Dept of Justice, Jan. 13th 2024
Such grandstanding confrontational behaviour is typical of MAGA Republicans in positions of authority. However, Abbott is a lead proponent, and not one to let considerations of humanity toward non-voters interfere with his high-profile posturing.
“Abbott is sending asylum seekers from Texas to the Upper Midwest in the middle of winter—many without coats to protect them from the snow—to a city whose shelters are already overfilled with migrants you have already sent here.”
—Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker
Chicago’s temperatures regularly drop well below zero at this time of year. Pritzker supports bipartisan immigration reform, but not like this.
Republicans are doubling down on pushing the idea that migrants threaten American society and that an individual state—Texas, in this case—can override federal authority.
“The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”
—Gov. Abbott, speaking on the right-wing Dana Loesch Show
But in this, as in so many issues, there is nothing new under the sun.
“Was this to be permitted the government would lose the confidence of its citizens and it would induce disunion everywhere. No, the crisis must be now met with firmness, our citizens protected, and the modern doctrine of nullification and secession put down forever. Nothing must be permitted to weaken our government at home or abroad”.
—President Andrew Jackson, Jan. 13, 1833, on South Carolina’s assertion that sovereign states could overrule federal laws
Despite the emollient tones he used after his Iowa victory about “bringing us all together”, Trump’s pugnacious rhetoric echoes Abbott and his extremism, as when immediately prior to the poll, Trump boasted:
“As soon as I take the oath of office, I’ll begin the largest deportation operation in American history.”
—Donald Trump, campaigning in Iowa.
#1090—758 words
davidsberry 