Dan Carter’s 1995 biography of Alabama’s infamous segregationist governor is titled “The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics.” But even Carter, brilliant historian though he is, did not predict just how transformational Wallace’s style of angry politics would be.
The Republican Party and its resentful base are now consumed by rage — furious, combustible, irrational. They have slipped far down the rabbit hole, MAGA-addled and drunk on fury with the modern world.
Events of the last week in the House and Senate are illustrative of the collapse into chaos on the political right. A small group of senators had spent months negotiating a legislative deal that would provide robust protections at the border, as Republicans demanded, as well as military aid for Israel and Ukraine. Since so many right-wingers are cozying up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, giving in to their border demands seemed the only way to ensure continued aid to Ukraine.
The GOP insisted on several tough measures, and the bill included those. According to The New York Times, the bill would have tightened the rules for asylum seekers, expanded detention facilities, hired more border agents, sped up the process to send back migrants who do not qualify for entry and even temporarily shut down the border during peak times. Perhaps most important, Democrats gave up on their decades-long demand that any border security bill include a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants already here.
After Democrats agreed to the GOP wish list, Republicans immediately decided they didn’t like the legislation after all. Perhaps they never expected their colleagues to accede to their harsh provisions. Perhaps it was simply their unflagging allegiance to their Dear Leader, Donald J. Trump, who has been denouncing the legislation since he learned of negotiations. He has dared any Republican to support it, declaring on social media that “only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill.”
Political analysts have pointed out that Trump, who adopted Wallace’s angry, racially aggrieved rhetoric in his first campaign, doesn’t want the migrant surge at the border to ease before November. That way, he can keep blasting his rival, President Joe Biden, for allowing migrants to enter, “poisoning the blood of our country,” as Trump puts it. It’s in Trump’s best interest to keep the issue alive through the election, but it’s also likely true that Trump doesn’t care to solve problems at the border at all, even if he were to return to the White House. There is no easier way for him to keep his xenophobic base enraged than to constantly bash the nonwhite migrants trying to escape violence and dire poverty in their home countries.
After all, Trump had four years to solve the migrant crisis, and he accomplished little other than separating babies and small children from their parents. (Some of those families, by the way, have yet to be reunited.) He is credited with increasing border apprehensions and detentions, but he didn’t deport as many undocumented migrants as President Barack Obama did.
And what of that 2,000-mile border wall that Trump was going to force Mexico to pay for? In fact, the Trump administration built 458 miles of barriers, 406 miles of which merely replaced old ones. The 1,200-mile stretch of the Rio Grande, the least secure part of the southern border, was left to customs officials and vigilantes.
Trump has never been schooled in the processes of governing, so he may have no idea about the bureaucratic hurdles and budget maneuvers that would be required to build a solid wall of more than a thousand miles. Some of the property such a wall would be mounted on is on private land, and the property owners may or may not want a wall. Besides, as critics have noted, even walls are not the ultimate protection. Drug smugglers have been digging tunnels under border walls for decades.
Still, in six of seven swing states, voters say they trust Trump over Biden on immigration by 52% to 30%. Trump doesn’t have to do anything about the problem — he just has to keep voters enraged.
Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.
