The New Yorker
Kindle Edition, 2015 © The New Yorker COMMENT HARSH TALK BY MARGARET TALBOT Three years ago, after the reëlection of Barack Obama, a rueful Republican National Committee launched an inquiry into where the Party had gone wrong. Researchers for the Growth & Opportunity Project contacted more than twenty- six hundred people—voters, officeholders, Party operatives —conducted focus groups, and took polls around the country. The resulting report is a bracingly forthright piece of self-criticism that took the G.O.P. to task for turning off young voters, minorities, and women. A key finding was that candidates needed to curb the harsh talk about immigration. Mitt Romney’s call for “self-deportation” was loser rhetoric. Making people feel that “a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States” was poor politics. The report offered one specific policy recommendation: “We must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies.” None of the current Republican Presidential hopefuls seem to have taken that counsel to heart. Donald Trump, the front-runner, wouldn’t, of course. “The Hispanics love me,” he claims, despite the fact that he proposes building a wall on the Mexican border to keep out people he equates with “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.” Ben Carson takes issue with Trump’s stance, sort of. “It sounds really cool, you know, ‘Let’s just round them all up and send them back,’ ” he said. But it would cost too much, so he advocates deploying armed drones at the border.
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