Count Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) as one of those Republicans who has learned absolutely nothing from the backlash that has hit his party over the last four years. Alexander steadfastly denies the role grassroots anger over illegal immigration has played in transforming Republican politics, even though it is chiefly responsible for the direction of the 2016 election. He – and he’s certainly not the only one – still thinks there is some kind of yearning for liberal “immigration reform” inside the conservative base, and if he keeps talking like this, the voters of Tennessee may finally decide they need to go in another direction. That is, unless Alexander becomes the next Republican to call it quits before the next election.
In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood this week, Alexander said that amnesty was still a viable vote on the floor of the Senate. “We need a legal immigration system, and we need to put that behind us,” he said. “We tried to do it in 2013; I voted for it. It would’ve solved many of the problems. I would vote for it again.”
Alexander essentially admitted that he’s still getting his political wisdom from the old GOP playbook that says the party needs to embrace amnesty if they want to pull Hispanic voters back into the fold. This strategy, which was popularized by the infamous 2012 election “autopsy,” was proven quite wrong by the 2016 election. But there are some Republicans who refuse to see what’s right in front of their faces.
“Are you comfortable with the message that the Republican Party under Donald Trump is sending on race right now?” asked Harwood.
“What I’d like for President Trump to do is to do for immigration, which involves race, what Nixon did for China,” he said. “And I’ve said that to him twice. And he’s responded very well. He could, more than any other president I can think of right now, help us solve the immigration problem in this country.”
Yes he could, but not in the way Alexander is thinking. This is no time to be reaching across the aisle. The kind of immigration reform the Democrats wants is unacceptable to millions of Americans who demand that we enforce the law. It has been proven time and again that mass amnesty – whether it comes from Congress or the president – only results in more illegal immigration. It stops nothing. It improves nothing. It only compounds the problem, as anyone with any common sense could see. We need to get tough, we need to build a wall, and we need to send a strong message to any immigrants who want to flaunt America’s laws.
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