Trump's Muslim Plan is too Radical For Dick Cheney?!

Many believe that Trump's call for a total an of Muslim immigrants-and even Muslim tourists-yesterday is unprecedented.

I have to say that watching his rally last night in a weird way kind of gives you goose bumps. I mean is this what Hitler sounded like in the early 1930s.

One thing that is pretty unprecedented-Trump goes too far for Dick Cheney. I'm not sure I've ever heard Dick Cheney rule out any idea from the Left before.

"Even former Vice President Dick Cheney has denounced Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's plan to ban Muslim immigration in America."

"Cheney, a decisive conservative himself, said on The Hugh Hewitt Show that the ban "goes against everything we stand for and believe in."

"I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from," Cheney said on a Monday appearance on the radio show. "A lot of people, my ancestors got here, because they were Puritans.

Cheney called Trump's plan a "mistaken notion" and to solve refugee and immigration problems, the U.S. must examine why they need to leave their countries in the first place.

"It’s a serious problem to make certain that the people coming in don’t represent ISIS. You’ve got to set up a vetting process," Cheney said

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/07/dick_cheney_says_donald_trump_s_plan_to_ban_muslims_is_un_american.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dick-cheney-donald-trump-muslim-ban-extreme

"However, even here I think it's important to see Trump as not something that has come out of the blue but the result of a long eytmology. You can dismiss Trump the individual-that's easy to do and not necessarily all that meaningful. How about the fact that most of the thousands of cheering supproters last night love this idea? This shows it's not just about Trump."

"But the long evolution of the modern Republican party made him possible. Even his latest proposal had precursors among the other candidates. Both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz had already talked about banning refugees from Muslim countries. Trump, as always, just takes it to the next level,"

"Just like his claim of thousands of cheering Muslims, he didn't invent the idea but he ran with it."
"Donald Trump's call to halt all Muslims from entering the United States was, in typical Trump style, a ratcheting up of xenophobia fervor simmering just beneath the surface. Two of his rivals, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), had already called for moratorium on refugees from Middle East countries with an Islamic State presence."

"But it also was the fulfillment of a long-held fever dream of an anti-Muslim think tank with ties among the hard-right Republicans. In his statement Monday, Trump cited a poll by the Center for Security Policy to argue that "the hatred is beyond comprehension" and that "until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad."

"Spokesman for Center for Security Policy told TPM via email that none of its members had been in contact with Trump as he crafted his position. But those connected to it have invoked logic similar to Trump's in the past, including proposals to ban granting Muslims entry visas to the United States."

"CSP's founder Frank Gaffney is a former Reagan administration official who has suggested U.S. officials have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, that the appointment of Justice Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court was a move by the "stealth jihad" movement and that President Obama is secretly a practicing Muslim."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-muslim-frank-gaffney

Trump is not creating something new here but exploiting something which has been festering for along time. I think you can argue that something like Trump had to happen eventually. The base is tired of dog whistle politics and wants dog bullhorn politics,

The GOP's problem as I see it is they still are not getting real. Only by confessiong their own sins, their own responsibility for Trump could they get past it. But you can't imagine that happening now. For years the party has been resistant to any self-criticism. In the middle of an election I can't see it.

For those of us who have watched the GOP for years, Trump is hardly shocking. He is simply the unvarnished id of the base.

"The shock over Trump’s proposal is certainly warranted. Here is the Republican Party’s long-time polling front-runner putting forth a clearly xenophobic plan that is as disgusting as it almost certainly is unconstitutional. Still, it shouldn’t come as a surprise."

"For starters, Trump has already suggested the government may need to shutter U.S. mosques and create a mandatory registry to track Muslims in the United States. While many of his rivals took issue with those remarks, they don’t sound all that different from him on the stump. Many have called for the same type of no-Muslims religious test for Syrian refugees looking to resettle in the United States."

" Ben Carson has proposed a similar test for future presidents (while also likening Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs”). And Ted Cruz has vowed to “shut down the broken immigration system that is letting jihadists into our country.” The common conservative refrain on the campaign trail, meanwhile, has long been that the first step in fighting ISIS is to define it as “radical Islamic terrorism.” (Republicans feel noticeably differently, however, about terrorist attacks committed by Christians.) The GOP field, then, is already on the record that they believe the Islamic faith itself poses a threat to the United States. Trump’s proposal is the logical conclusion to the type of illogical belligerence that Republicans have increasingly directed at Muslims in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris and last week’s massacre in San Bernardino, California."

"Furthermore, Trump’s new position is cut from the same cloth as his old one—the anti-immigration demagoguery that has been the centerpiece of his unexpectedly durable campaign from the get go. This summer he went from late-night punch line to late-night-punch-line-who-is-leading-the-GOP-polls thanks in no small part to branding many Mexican immigrants as rapists, murderers, and drug dealers. One of the bigger differences between his wall-building and deportation-heavy plan and this no-Muslims-allowed one is that he’s not promising to make Muslims pay to implement the latter."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/07/donald_trump_s_no_muslims_plan_is_disgusting_but_not_surprising.html

Trump has discovered the power of using Islamophobia as a marker like he did with anti immigration fervor.

"Once Trump learned he had an immigration hammer, it was only a matter of time before he saw every Muslim as a nail."

But again, Trump is playing on a narrative that's been around for a long time.

"One reason Trump—and the GOP at large—has so seamlessly shifted from the larger immigration issue to post-9/11 terrorism fears is because that conflation was already happening long before Paris. As my colleague Joshua Keating noted last year, baseless worries that ISIS terrorists would travel to Mexico and then sneak in over the United States’ southern border predate this campaign. Rick Perry suggested back in 2014 that there was a “very real possibility” that members of ISIS or other terrorist groups were entering the U.S. illegally via Mexico. Scott Walker made a similar case this summer when he said that Islamic terrorists were “most likely” smuggling themselves across the Mexican border. Once Trump learned he had an immigration hammer, it was only a matter of time before he saw every Muslim as a nail."

"Thankfully, many of Trump’s GOP rivals scrambled to criticize his latest outlandish plan. Chris Christie called it a “ridiculous” proposal, “the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about”; Bush took to Twitter to call Trump “unhinged”; and other candidates offered similar assessments. Still, it’s worth remembering how quickly some of these same candidates have come around to Trump’s general worldview in the past."

Yes it is worth remembering. Remember Jeb himself has suggested only allowing in Christian refugees. Once you say that, isn't saying no Muslims whatsoever just a logical step further along the same continuum? And Christie is the tough guy who says no 4 year old orphans, no exceptions.

So long as the GOP tries to fool itself here it won't defeat Trumpism. To be sure, the party has been Trumpist all along but with a dog whistle rather than a bullhorn. Now they're shocked the base prefers a bullhorn.

"The Donald had been warning that Syrian refugees were an ISIS “Trojan Horse” for months before the GOP-controlled House—with the blessing of GOP candidates like Christie—passed legislation effectively affirming that view. It was a similar story following Trump’s anti-immigrant jeremiad that launched his campaign. Despite the GOP establishment’s well-documented fear about alienating Hispanic voters as Mitt “Self-Deportation” Romney did four years ago, Trump’s theoretically more sober-minded rivals have been willing to entertain the ideas of building a 1,989-mile along the Mexican border and tracking foreigners like they’re FedEx packages. Even Jeb, a man who only a year earlier described coming to the United States illegally as “an act of love” people undertook for their families, began using the derogatory term “anchor babies” while his party talked opening about repealing the 14thamendment."

"Trump’s rivals, then, might not like the wordings of his policy prescriptions. They’ve already made it clear, though, that they don’t disagree with the hateful worldview underpinning them."

Exactly. I mean Kaisch may sound more reasonable but then you realize that he's for a 'big, beautiful wall' as well. Ok, now he thinks Trump's idea of deporting 11 million Latinos is absurd but in 2010 he ran on the same.

Sorry Republicans, you have lived with Trumpism and it will be what kills you.