Is 'the squad's' language on immigration resonating with voters?
Does 'children in cages' rhetoric work? Pollster Frant Luntz weighs in on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
President Trump is winning the immigration “messaging war” for a reason – Americans are tired of listening to the Democrats’ lies about border security.
One prominent liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress, is warning that the Democrat Party’s radical stance on immigration is helping to create “the false dichotomy of America as either a nation of immigrants or a nation of laws,” putting Democrats in the position of defending lawlessness.
The Daily Beast, a progressive news outlet that frequently attacks my father’s immigration policies, interpreted the study as a sign that Democrats are “losing [the] immigration messaging war to Trump” because their rhetoric is “making the party and its candidates appear soft on enforcement” while also likely “weakening future attempts for humanitarian-focused immigration reform.”
DONALD TRUMP, JR.: DEMOCRATS' PETTY OBSTRUCTION OF AMBASSADORIAL CONFIRMATIONS MUST END NOW
The Daily Beast and the Center for American Progress are half-right – the Democrats are losing the debate on immigration, but it’s due to their radical policies, not their messaging. Their failure to persuade the American people to support their extreme immigration proposals, including open borders and “free” health care for illegal aliens, is more than just a rhetorical mishap that can be fixed with a better “messaging” strategy.
Democrats will have to do far more than merely adjust their rhetoric if they want to be taken seriously on the illegal immigration issue. Judging from their behavior, though, it doesn’t seem like the Democrats are inclined to start embracing common-sense immigration policies any time soon.
The Democrat Party and its 2020 presidential candidates don’t just “appear” soft on enforcement, as the Daily Beast asserts – they are soft on enforcement. During the second night of the first round of presidential primary debates, almost all of the Democrats on stage indicated that they would support decriminalizing illegal immigration, and all 10 candidates raised their hands to affirm that they would provide taxpayer-funded health care to those who cross the border illegally.
While experienced messaging gurus can sometimes work miracles with even the most extreme policy platforms, the radicalism of today’s Democrat Party is truly beyond redemption. It doesn’t help matters that the Democrats’ track record of obstructing my father’s immigration policies proves that their extremism is far from “theoretical,” to use Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s terminology.
Ever since my father was inaugurated, the Democrats have done everything in their power to derail his immigration policies, even insisting that the ongoing humanitarian and national security catastrophe on the southern border is nothing but a “manufactured crisis.”
Time and time again, Democrats in Congress have blocked the president’s efforts to fund the border wall, slandered our brave Border Patrol agents, ignored the fact that illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers a whopping $116 billion a year, and most importantly, disregarded the lives of the victims of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens. They even attempted to torpedo bipartisan legislation to provide more funding for detention centers by including poison pill provisions that would have made it nearly impossible for immigration authorities to properly detain illegal immigrants.
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Democrats will have to do far more than merely adjust their rhetoric if they want to be taken seriously on the illegal immigration issue. Judging from their behavior, though, it doesn’t seem like the Democrats are inclined to start embracing common-sense immigration policies any time soon.
Even the Democrats' mouthpieces in Washington know that they're losing the immigration war that they themselves started. But don't look to their messaging to find out why – people are recoiling from them because their open borders policies are anti-American and dangerous.