House Republican candidates are blanketing the airwaves with TV ads embracing a hard line on immigration — a dramatic shift from the last midterm elections in 2014 when immigration was not on the GOP's political radar, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from Kantar Media.
Republicans have aired more than 14,000 campaign ads touting a tough Trump-style immigration platform so far this year. The barrage underscores why House GOP leaders worry that passing a legislative fix for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, referred to as DREAMers, would put GOP candidates at risk heading into the fall election.
“I’ll end sanctuary cities to stop illegals from taking our jobs … and use conservative grit to build the darn wall,” Troy Balderson, a GOP state senator running for Congress in Ohio, promises in one such ad.
Democrats, meanwhile, are bombarding voters with ads that promise to protect Obamacare, shore up Social Security, and expand Medicare, the data from Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) shows.
“We need Medicare for all, to make absolutely certain that what happened to my family never happens to yours” California Democrat Paul Kerr says in on TV spot that begins by recounting how his family was financially devastated by medical bills after his mother was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders championed that kind of single-payer universal health care system in the 2016 election.
The competing messages demonstrate just how far apart the two parties are. They’re not just talking about key issues differently; they’re touting completely different issues to motivate activists and win hotly contested primaries.
“It sometimes feels like the two parties are talking to two different countries,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
And in many ways, they are, especially in primaries, Kondick said. He notes that Republicans are appealing to a whiter, older, more rural electorate, while Democrats are courting a more diverse, younger, urban constituency.
They're not even hiding it anymore. This nonsense about House Republicans forcing an immigration vote? I don't believe it for a second, not while House Republican candidates are freely running ads about "illegals taking jobs" and "building the wall". If anything, the GOP will push a hardline bill that will have enough votes to pass.
Republican leaders are facing long odds as they scramble to thwart an internal rebellion over immigration just months before November’s midterm elections.
The leaders are attempting to broker a deal that satisfies competing factions of their restive conference and defuses a push by mutinous centrists threatening to force action to protect undocumented immigrants in a series of head-to-head floor votes that would highlight deep GOP divisions over an issue that has long been radioactive within the party.
The dispute has centered largely on what legal protections should be extended to those living in the country illegally, and to whom they should apply — thorny enough questions on their own. But the leaders’ effort was further complicated on Thursday, when President Trump warned that he'd veto any bill to shore up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program if it fails to fund his favored wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Unless it improves a wall — and I mean a wall, a real wall — and unless it improves very strong border security, there’ll be no approvals from me, because I have to either approve it or not,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel.
It's going to get a lot worse for anyone who's not white in this country. Count on it. And never forget the person leading this effort to demonize and criminalize immigrants is Trump himself.
President Trump tried out his own midterm playbook Tuesday at a campaign rally in Tennessee by ramping up his rhetoric on illegal immigration and gang-related crimes.
The president's main goal with the Nashville event was to campaign for GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who finds herself in a close Senate contest with former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen that could be pivotal in deciding control of the Senate.
"I've never heard of this guy — who is he?" Trump chided Bredesen. "He's an absolute tool of Chuck Schumer, and of course the MS-13 lover Nancy Pelosi."
It was a new moniker for the House minority leader, and Trump doubled down on controversial comments he'd made earlier this month about the drug gang.
"What was the name?" the president prodded the crowd, who yelled back "Animals!"
"They're not human beings," Trump added, saying that they use "glaring loopholes in our immigration laws" in order "to infiltrate our country" and rape, murder and "cut people up into little pieces."
It really won't be long before some Trump supporters decide that it's open season on "animals" and take the law into their own hands, folks.
It's going to get scary and bloody until we stop it.
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