He Likes Ike
12th November 2015
Mark Steyn is deliciously dyspeptic today.
At this point in the evening, the candidates were arguing not whether it was disgraceful but whether it was do-able. Trump’s response is that not only is it do-able but it’s already been done – by a two-term Republican president. Eisenhower, by the way, was the last non-politician to be drafted as presidential nominee (and “I Like Ike” came from Irving Berlin’s Call Me Madam). His sudden reappearance in the GOP pantheon is a fine example of the difference Trump’s made to this primary season: without his presence in the race, no-one would be talking about the practicalities of mass deportation of illegal aliens.
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It is striking that, even in a conservative debate, mass, remorseless, illegal immigration is discussed almost entirely from the illegals’ point of view: as Kasich advises, think of the families, think of the children. Their families, their children. The families of those they’ve supplanted are of less consequence. The argument made by Bush and Kasich against enforcing the immigration laws is an appeal to moral preening: this is “not who we are”. But using mass immigration to destroy the lives of your own citizens? That’s exactly who we are.