There are a whole host of things President Trump has done that Republicans on Capitol Hill have stomached — sometimes begrudgingly. When Trump attacks the Justice Department and the FBI as rogue agencies conspiring to implement a constitutional coup, GOP lawmakers mildly protest but take it in stride. When Trump tars the news media as enemies of the people, conservatives call it unhelpful and leave it at that. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the gravelly voiced senior senator from Kentucky, tries to talk about Trump’s antics and ad-libbing as little as possible during his weekly press stakeouts. And when there is controversy he can’t duck from, McConnell dismisses it as a shiny object that distracts from the real legislative work senators are doing.
But forcibly separating children from their parents at the southern border, a policy the Trump administration insists is not a policy, is a development that is so repugnant in the minds of voters that these very same lawmakers have actually broken with the White House. Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Orrin Hatch of Utah, three men who are normally rock solid for the administration, either introduced bills to stop the family separations or sent letters urging the executive branch to cease the policy on its own.
Audio of young children wailing and being held in steel cages in antiseptic-looking, big-box stores is not only jarring to the public sensibilities, it is a potential trainwreck for the Republican Party politically. Even Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, the man responsible for ensuring the GOP retains the House majority, admitted as much. “It’s something, as a dad, that bothers me,” Stivers confessed to Politico. “It’s something that bothers a lot of people. … I’m sure on its own, if you ask people, it probably doesn’t look good.”
No, it certainly does not.
Steve Miller, Steve Bannon, Breitbart News, and the uber restrictionist Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who derides anything short of a full closure of America’s borders is amnesty, may believe that the immigration issue will fire up Trump’s base during a challenging midterm election year. But they were probably talking about specific aspects of immigration, like throwing MS-13 “animals” out of the country and building a border wall — not yanking crying kids away from their parents. The first two can be sold on a traditional law-and-order platform, the latter can’t really be marketed at all.
To the extent public opinion polls tell us anything these days, what’s going on down south is a bad omen for the GOP brand. Roughly two-thirds of Americans surveyed oppose breaking illegal immigrant families apart, including 68 percent of independents and 68 percent of whites with a college degree. A CNN poll records similar numbers: Only 27 percent of independent voters approve of the policy.
Why does this matter? Because if Republicans want to hold the House, they need to hold on to seats in suburban areas that are highly educated, more compassionate about the plight of illegal immigrants fleeing violence in Central America, and less enamored of Trump’s rhetoric. Twenty-three of these Republican-held districts didn’t even vote for Trump in 2016, and while some voters in the suburbs and exurbs may support a few of the administration’s policies, very few of them can be counted on as Trump loyalists at the polls. Republicans like McConnell, Cornyn, and the lawmakers running the party’s re-election effort recognize the trends, and they want to stem the bleeding before the GOP wakes up lifeless the morning after Election Day. McConnell is a poker player whose face doesn’t express a lot of feeling, but he is likely having a mild panic attack below the surface.
The last thing Republicans can afford is for Democrats to typecast them as heartless robots with no soul, mercy, or humanity. It took far longer for Trump to get there — apparently, we can thank first daughter Ivanka Trump for bringing the plight of detained children and infants to her father’s attention — but he finally made the right decision and caved to the public and political pressure. For the Republican leadership and the dozens of GOP members trying to retain their seats this fall, reversing the detention policy at the border was not only a humanitarian imperative — it was a political necessity.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
