Thread: So, how are Trump fans feeling about his climbdown on mass deportation?

So, how are Trump fans feeling about his climbdown on mass deportation?

POSTED AT 8:01 PM ON AUGUST 23, 2016 BY ALLAHPUNDIT


It’ll be days or weeks before we have a poll on The Big Flip. In the absence of data, though, why not enjoy an anecdote or two?

My guess was that some Trumpers would feel betrayed by his walkback on mass deportation since it was, after all, the one thing that set him apart from the rest of the GOP on his core issue. The attitude of seemingly every other #NeverTrumper in media was that no, his fans will gulp down whatever garbage he spoonfeeds them. The early advantage belongs to the cynics:

Some Trump supporters at his Akron rally said they understood why he’s changing his position.

“You do one thing in a primary to get our core people—it’s just American politics,” said Tom Zawistowsi, 62, an Akron Republican in the telecommunications business. But it’s clear that “the American people have said we want something done with the illegals,” Zawistowski said. “If you break the law, there should be consequences.”

“It’s a waste of resources” to try to deport millions of people, said Erik Schramm, 21, a full-time student at Kent State University who voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich in the presidential primary and supports Trump now. “If he wants to back down on things that are over the top, and say, ‘Hey, I’ll work with everybody a little bit’ when it comes to his policies, I think he’s trying to do that.” Schramm has no problem with “a path to citizenship,” he said.

Newt Young of Mansfield, Ohio, said, “It’s going to be very difficult to deport 11 million immigrants. Just don’t let any more in until we sort this out. And if they have any sort of legal problem, deport immediately.”

“I think his position needs to evolve a little bit,” another attendee said. “You can’t deport everyone, not people with families.” Only one person at the rally quoted in the Bloomberg piece said every illegal needs to go home. Go figure.

Is it fair to accuse Trump supporters of having conveniently changed their minds on legalization, though? A quick tour through some polling over the past six months paints a complicated picture. It’s unambiguously true that Trump fans are more likely to support mass deportation than any other demographic, but that doesn’t mean they move in lockstep on this subject. For instance, here’s some Pew data from mid-March:



Nearly 70 percent of Trump voters say immigrants are a “burden” but only 42 percent support a national effort to deport them en masse. Even at the height of Trumpmania during the primaries, 47 percent were prepared to let them stay. That question was asked again more recently, in a CBS survey taken in mid-July. This time 51 percent of Trump supporters, a clear majority, agreed that illegals should be allowed to stay while 44 percent said they should be forced to leave the country. It’s not remotely true that Trumpers are uniformly in favor of mass deportation or that they ever have been.

…But it is true that various polls have showed more of them in favor than opposed. An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll taken in February, a few weeks after primary voting began, found 55 percent of Trump supporters in favor of deporting all illegals. Last September, a Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers found 73 percent of Trump backers supported mass deportation. If you sift through the exit polls for the GOP primaries this spring, you’ll find Trump roundly and consistently beating the competition among Republican voters who preferred mass deportation to letting illegals stay. In New Hampshire Trump took 51 percent of that contingent versus 19 percent for Ted Cruz; in South Carolina he took 47 percent to Cruz’s 24; and in Florida he took 63 percent to Cruz’s 18. Granted, Trump won all three states, but he outperformed his overall share of the electorate significantly among mass-deportation backers. Even in a state where he lost badly, Wisconsin, he still topped Cruz narrowly among the “deport ’em all” crowd. All of which stands to reason: Mass deportation has been at the politically incorrect heart of his signature issue and a substantial number of Trump supporters love him for it. Whether that number is a majority or a very significant minority, it’s large enough that you would expect it to hurt Trump, maybe badly, if the deportation fans are serious about the policy. If they’re not, if this is and was always more about a cult of personality around Trump than in imposing certain policies, then they’ll roll over. We’ll know more next week.
By the way, here’s where he’s at among different racial demographics in the newNBC/SurveyMonkey survey out today, in which he trails Hillary by eight:



If you didn’t know the 2012 exit poll numbers, which group would you guess is killing him there? Black voters? Nope. As lopsided as the number is, Trump is slightly ahead of Romney’s pace of losing 93/6. Latinos? Good guess, but nope. Hillary’s a tiny bit ahead of Obama’s 71/27 margin, but not significantly. Asians or “Other”? Nope and nope. Obama won those groups 73/26 and 58/38, respectively. Trump is ahead of Romney’s clip in both. It’s whites who are making the math impossible for Trump. A nine-point win simply won’t cut it given Democratic margins among nonwhites. Romney won whites, 59/39, but Hillary thus far has managed to cut into some key white subgroups, most notably white women and white college graduates. Which explains why observers think Trump’s outreach to blacks and Latinos over the past 10 days is less about winning those voters and more about impressing those pro-Clinton white subgroups that he’s not the ogre that the Democrats and the media say he is. If he can move white women and white college grads, he’s in business. If he can’t, there’s almost no way he’s going to pull enough nonwhite voters from Hillary to make up the difference.

Update: He did another event with — who else? — Sean Hannity today, and Hannity asked him about immigration. As Dan Foster says, we’ll call this “Make America Great Again II: The Softening.”

“Is there any part of the law that you might be able to change that would accommodate those people that contribute to society, have been law-abiding, have kids here?” Hannity asked. “Would there be any rule in your mind?”

“There certainly can be a softening because we’re not looking to hurt people,” Trump said in his response. “We want people — we have some great people in this country.”

He followed up by saying this:

That’s what “Deport ‘Em All Donald” is pitching to Republican voters now? It’d be mean to remove an illegal and his family if they’ve been here 20 years? Looks like the real Trump has finally returned.

http://hotair.com/archives/2016/08/2...tm_campaign=nl

That's really bad reporting.

I'm not seeing it. His speech in Akron on the 22nd didn't confirm this reporting. This is all propaganda and brainwashing. They know that Trump is not all there is to doing something about illegal immigration. It's public pressure that has got to do the job and if the public can be convinced that Trump isn't going to do anything about it, then pressure on Trump is off and he will be more available to other pressure not to do anything about it.

But the other factor in all this is Trump himself and I don't think he is any less personally passionate about the issue then anyone else who is sincere about doing something about it.

Part of the brainwashing end of this is the unspoken message that Trump cannot be elected with a truly anti-illegal message. But I think it is the other way around. I don't think he will win if he weakens to much on the illegal immigrant issue.

You're exactly right, it's really unfortunate too, because I think this CORRUPT MEDIA SCAM led by Kellyanne Conway is going to cost him the election. This is Day Four of the SCAM, Kellyanne was in multiple interviews every day of it, while Trump is out on the trail working his ass off, she's sitting in the Media Rooms with her Media Pals saying the opposite of what Trump is saying on the trail. He had to call in to Fox and Friends and correct her statements, he had to go on O'Reilly and correct her statements. He blamed Univision as the liar, which they were. All the Hispanics Univision claimed to talk with said Univision was wrong!!

Yet, there is Kellyanne multiple times a day on national media saying Univision was right. Kellyanne is a Trojan Horse setting him up for a loss. She has to go. She must be fired now. The damage she has caused just on this one issue is unbelievable, his signature issue, and has turned his rise in the polls right around, sent them down and put Hillary back on top.

A tragedy that I don't believe can be overcome at this point. If he fires Kellyanne which he must do, MUST DO, he'll be attacked for blaming her and being mean to a woman. It's an impossible situation at this point.

Enforcing existing laws is deporting illegal aliens. It's just a kinder and PC way of saying it.

Originally Posted by pfwagner

Enforcing existing laws is deporting illegal aliens. It's just a kinder and PC way of saying it.

Exactly.

You know we need to change our language.

We have had our language misused in so many ways. Words that should mean one thing, now means something else.

Yes, let's not say deportation - let's simply demand law enforcement -

Enforce the laws - period.

Also, we do need to do something - we really do.

These bogus poll numbers vastly underreport the willingness of a vast majority of Americans to deport almost all illegal aliens immediately.

W

Originally Posted by nntrixie

You know we need to change our language.

We have had our language misused in so many ways. Words that should mean one thing, now means something else.

Yes, let's not say deportation - let's simply demand law enforcement -

Enforce the laws - period.

Also, we do need to do something - we really do.

It all needs to be done quickly and quietly. Enforcing the law is deportation, so you're absolutely right about the language. "Enforce the law. Period." And do it quickly, quietly, legally, humanely, without fuss or muss, mercy or exception. Just do it. Lady Justice is Blind, that means she doesn't listen to sob stories, con artists, players, manipulators. The facts will do nicely. Are you a citizen? No. Are you here with valid unexpired documents? No. Justice = OUT YOU GO.

Justice isn't determined by polls or popular opinion. Laws are the result of public opinion and the Constitution. Public opinion elects members of Congress, Congress writes the laws, the President enforces the laws. So whether Americans "feel right" about deporting the family they wave to each morning and their children play with together is not relevant. They should be waving each morning to a citizen or legal immigrant family and their children should be playing with citizen or legal immigrant children, and once the illegal aliens are gone, they will be, as it should be.

This isn't "tough love" as some call it. It's justice, because it's the law, which is just and good law that protects the lives, jobs, money and security of the American People and the sovereignty and sustainable viability of the United States, all the reasons we have US immigration law to begin with.