Just once I would like to see Republican politicians have a reasonable response to something. Whether it’s Ebola or Latin American kids fleeing gangs or the Paris attacks, GOP politicians, by and large, manage to deploy some wildly uninformed knee-jerk response that completely misses the point.
The governors of Michigan and Alabama, Rick Snyder and Robert Bentley respectively, kicked off a parade of more than two dozen governors—almost exclusively Republicans—determined not just to take ownership over the issue, but to actually make it worse by refusing to accept Syrian refugees into their states.
"Michigan is a welcoming state and we are proud of our rich history of immigration," Snyder said. "But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents."
Right, safety. Unfortunately, Rick Snyder has no idea what he’s talking about. As was pointed out by the National Association of Evangelicals—an organization I rarely quote—tourists pose a much bigger threat to the U.S. than vetted refugees.
A tourist with a French passport does not need screening or a visa; a refugee from Syria must pass multiple careful tests for eligibility.
Snyder was, in fact, given two chances during an NPR interview to also support a “pause” in processing visitors and tourist visas, but he declined, saying, “I wouldn’t necessarily do that.” Of course not, because the tourism and business communities have actual lobbying power. Instead, Snyder and his GOP colleagues are focusing on refugees, a powerless minority that is easy pickings for politicians trying to score points with their constituents.
So now that we know where the governors stand, let’s check in on the presidential candidates, who promise to lead this country to greatness. And not just mega wall builder Donald Trump—let’s consult the “smarties.”
After pondering the crisis for several days since the attacks, Jeb! Bush wanted more careful screening of Syrian refugees but said he felt comfortable letting Christian refugees in. How could he tell who was Christian and who wasn’t?
Mr. Bush did not offer a clear answer, but said the onus would be on the refugees to demonstrate their religion.
“You’re a Christian — I mean, you can prove you’re a Christian,” he said. “You can’t prove it, then, you know, you err on the side of caution.”
Well, that seemed a little murky. So the campaign decided to clear things up.
And that’s the word from the establishment candidate (i.e. “sane” Republican). Two guys who would desperately like to replace Jeb! as the establishment candidate said even dumber stuff.
Here’s Chris Christie:
“I don’t think orphans under 5 are being, you know, should be admitted into the United States at this point.”
#nowords
Then Ohio governor John “I’ve about had it with these people” Kasich, who’s derided the GOP race as “silly” and “crazy,” weighed in.
John Kasich would like to add a new federal agency if he becomes president: one to promote "Judeo-Christian Western values."
"U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents' propaganda and disinformation,” Kasich said. “I will consolidate them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share.”
Okay, so the guy who was mocking all his rivals’ fanciful policy prescriptions wants to pipe some Judeo-Christian hotline into the Middle East to change hearts and minds? I’ve got a wild idea: How about just accepting some refugees to demonstrate American values and change hearts and minds?
Unfortunately, by week’s end, that parade of absurdity was all completely overshadowed by the GOP’s hate monger in chief: Donald Trump. In a nutshell, Trump “absolutely” wants to close all U.S. mosques; his strategy for defeating ISIS is to “bomb the shit out of them”; and he’s also “absolutely” planning on laying the groundwork for recreating one of the biggest—if not the biggest—and most vile atrocities of all time: The Holocaust.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Trump noted that in order to fight terrorism in the U.S., “certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country.”
When a Yahoo News reporter asked Trump if that meant databases and IDs to track individuals' religion, the Republican presidential candidate "wouldn't rule it out," according to the publication.
"We're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely," Trump said. "We're going to have to look at the mosques. We're going to have to look very, very carefully."
The audio of that horrific interview did, in fact, prove the reporting correct—Trump now wants a registry of Muslims, as of the latest reports Friday morning. (Update: Trump still hasn’t clarified.) What’s perhaps most frightening is that Trump’s anti-Muslim tirade appears to have helped him regain his footing with GOP voters, where by week’s end he had ticked up to 30 percent support to 18 percent for his closest rival, Ben Carson, also a foreign policy whiz.
Not all Democrats were perfect this week either, with nearly 50 House Democrats voting with Republicans to erect new barriers to Syrian refugees entering the country, because waiting two years and being screened repeatedly by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, and the departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security isn’t enough.
But, in particular, one Democratic mayor in Virginia—David Bowers—actually held up WWII-era Japanese internment camps as a justification for rejecting Syrian refugees. It’s hard to know how, even with the benefit of hindsight, someone could have such a warped reading of history short of having an appreciably low IQ and being completely devoid of human empathy.
But certainly some Democratic governors and Hillary Clinton provided a glimpse of leadership in the face of public opinion that finds 56 percent of voters favor closing the door entirely on Syrian refugees. Clinton has been championing the issue with voters all week, including during her hawkish foreign policy speech Thursday.
“But we cannot allow terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our values and our humanitarian obligations. Turning away orphans, applying a religious test, discriminating against Muslims, slamming the door on every Syrian refugee, that is just not who we are. We are better than that,” Clinton said. “We should be doing more to ease this humanitarian crisis, not less.”
Many progressives will likely not be happy with Clinton’s push to get more aggressive with ISIS. But here’s one thing it does highlight: while nearly all the GOP candidates have expressed varying degrees of support for going to war with ISIS, they also want to close our borders to all those who will be fleeing our bombs and, frankly, already are.
That’s the gutless state of the GOP today: close our borders and bomb ‘em.