Texas Rallies the Red States Amid Immigration Crisis

Immigration

Texas Rallies the Red States Amid Immigration Crisis

Abbott spearheads a revival of federalism—and just in the nick of time.

What’s happening in Eagle Pass, Texas—the confrontation between Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration over border security—is an important legal question, speaking to the authority of the federal government vs. the right of a state to defend itself. It’s also an important political question, because border security, or lack thereof, will be a dominant issue this November. 

But perhaps most of all, it’s an important national question, as Americans wrestle with basics: Can the federal government be trusted to provide for the common defense? Are we still one people? Or is red-blue polarization so profound that we’d be better off, on both sides of the divide, seeking some new constitutional settlement? One that enables wall-builders to have their way, and the sanctuary city-ers to have their way? 

Am I being melodramatic? I don’t think so, but at minimum, I’m being consistent. Here at The American Conservative in 2005, I wrote a piece on uncontrolled immigration and associated chaos in France under the headline “National Suicide.” I observed that the troubles the French faced were anticipated in a novel published three decades earlier, Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints, which depicted a self-loathing liberalism so deep that the only solution was to destroy one’s homeland. And we all should be mindful of the apothegm from John O’Sullivan around the time that globalists nudged him out of National Review: “You can have open borders but you can’t have anything else.” That is, mass migration overwhelms everything, and the U.S. would be no exception. (O’Sullivan has since decamped to Hungary, a country that takes border security seriously indeed.)

In the meantime, headlines speak to the heated passions aroused in and by Eagle Pass. MarketWatch bannered the confrontation as a “skirmish,” while The New York Post, tabloid-y to its toes, blared that it was a “war.” (As of this writing, there’s been no actual violence.) 

For sure, the left sees the set-to in apocalyptic terms. “Eagle Pass is today’s Fort Sumter,” thundered an op-ed in the January 25 Philadelphia Inquirer. Will we have a civil war? I doubt it. As I argued here at TAC two years ago, the existence of 50 separate states makes it relatively easy to foresee an internal division that preserves the union, albeit in altered form. (An upcoming Hollywood movie, bluntly titled, Civil War, doesn’t change my mind; the studios have proven that they have no handle on contemporary politics.) 

Still, the sovereignty of the states must be jealously guarded. So it’s inspiring to see Texas defend itself from foreign invasion, even against the wishes of the Biden administration. Today, no American stands taller than the wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott. 

Moreover, it’s heartening to see so many other governors aligning with Abbott. Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma was terse and to the point: “Oklahoma stands with Texas.” Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia added, “Enough is enough. Our southern border is in crisis thanks to the Biden administration’s refusal to do their job”; Kemp added that Abbott and Texas “have our full support.” Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia declared, “The Biden administration has turned every state into a border state. We must stop the flow of fentanyl, save lives, and secure our southern border.” Then Idaho’s Brad Little: “The lawless southern border threatens the lives of all Americans, including Idahoans.” Now to Nebraska’s Jim Pillen: “I was proud to order Nebraska State Troopers and National Guard to the border last year, and Nebraska is proud to stand with Texas now.” Alabama chief executive Kay Ivey: “Texas and the states have stepped up time and time again. The White House? Purposely absent. I have had enough.” Doug Burgum of North Dakota said Abbott “deserves our thanks for taking action to stop illegal crossings and disrupt drug and human trafficking.” Iowa’s Kim Reynolds added, “When the federal government fails, states step in. Iowa sent the Iowa National Guard and State Troopers down to the border last year to stop this invasion.” Razorback Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “If President Biden won’t defend us, states will have to defend themselves. Arkansas stands with Texas.” 

Length limits prevent listing all the righteous governors, but a special note on Florida’s Ron DeSantis. His presidential campaign may have fizzled, but his gubernatorial activism showed us that a single state leader can pull the national debate rightward. So it was not surprising that he was cogent and eloquent as he threw his support to Abbott: “If the Constitution really made states powerless to defend themselves against an invasion, it wouldn’t have been ratified in the first place and Texas would have never joined the union when it did. TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it. FL will keep assisting Texas with personnel and assets.” 

In fact, in just a day, 25 of the 26 Republican governors had signed on with their Texas brother. All these state executives have thus inscribed their names on an honor roll of destiny. Now it would be melodramatic to compare these figures to William Travis, the heroic defender of the Alamo. Legend has it that back in the battle of 1836, he drew a line in the sand with his sword, bidding each Texian to step across and stand with him, knowing that martyrdom awaited. All but one man did. But hey, we understand that Governor Phil Scott of Vermont, the lone holdout among GOPers, flukily represents a state where Joe Biden got 66 percent of the vote. 

To be sure, nobody among the governors is at personal risk, but political risk could be a different story. Among the 50 U.S. senators representing those 25 states are eight Democrats. Who’s reading each state correctly? The GOP governor who supports Abbott, or the Democratic senator who supports Biden and his homeland security (sic) man Alejandro Mayorkas? Over the next few election years, we’ll find out.

Other important players, too, have rallied to Abbott and Texas, suggesting that the ripple is now a wave. Here’s House Speaker Mike Johnson: “I stand with Governor Abbott. The House will do everything in its power to back him up. The next step: holding Secretary Mayorkas accountable.” And then there’s Elon Musk, of indeterminate partisan ID, but undeniably a big kahuna for the right: “This administration is deliberately breaking the law by aiding and abetting illegal immigration at an unprecedented scale!” We can add that “TwiX,” in its shambling digital multitudes, is now the leader of right-wing opinion formation, having eclipsed the clunky cabler, Fox News. Oh, and Donald Trump, taking time away from his legal travails, has added his support to Abbott. For better or worse, Trump had a lot to do with the current Schmittian binary in American politics, yet we can now see that the red-blue chasm has earth-movers other than him. 

In fact, some purple is edging toward red. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. the independent candidate for president, tweeted, “Texas is right. Biden’s failure to secure the border leaves states no choice but to take matters into their own hands…A country without borders is not a country at all.” Kennedy is officially a Democrat, and so his move indicates which way he thinks the Zeitgeist is blowing. 

Historians will marvel at how President Biden got himself into this situation. He won six terms in the U.S. Senate by posing as “Middle Class Joe,” with MOR positions on everything. Yet somehow, late in life, he lost his deftness. Obviously some of the problem is his age, but also, there’s the deep state that vexes any president, and the even deeper abyss of Biden’s own appointees, below Mayorkas. 

In 2022, the AOC-adjacent activist Sean McElwee told Politico: “Do you know how many cryptocommunists are now working for the Biden administration? How many former Bernie Sanders staffers who are pretty f—ing deep in the White House’s policy nexus? The revolutionary socialist phase has kind of faded for the left. But the flip side of that is that a lot of those people have infiltrated to the highest levels of Democratic politics.” So there you have it: the fears of every Republican are being proven out. But here’s the thing: They are also the fears of every normie Democrat with a normal desire to win elections. 

Eventually, the inside story of Gramscian subversion will be told. Yet in the meantime, seeking to explain Bidenite behavior, we might reach for the explanatory tool provided by the eminent historian Robert Conquest. His “third law” instructs, “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” That’s a point that’s so searingly cynical that it takes a while to wrap one’s head around it. Yet what else could explain the administration’s devotion to a policy that even NPR admits is regarded by most Americans as allowing an “invasion”? And that Gallup says only 26 percent of Americans support? 

So here’s a prediction: If Texas holds firm, as state Attorney General Ken Paxton says it will, the Biden administration will shrink from an actual armed confrontation with molon labe–minded Texans. The Biden Justice Department will then move to long-term lawfare, and Lone Star will keep its barbed wire, and add some. Whereupon migrants and their international financiers will move on softer targets, i.e. the other three border states, all of which have Democratic governors. This situation will fester for a while, until the incumbent executives recall the fate of an earlier Democratic governor who was ambushed by migrants allowed by an earlier Democratic president. That Dem duo was then-governor Bill Clinton and then-president Jimmy Carter, both defeated for re-election in 1980. Fidel Castro’s Mariel exodus was a minor factor in Carter’s defeat, but a major factor in Clinton’s defeat, since so many of the Cuban criminals ended up in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. 

So as the 2024 election draws nigh with migration running high, Democratic panic will set in, and Biden—by then perhaps without the services of Mayorkas the millstone—will do something dramatic about migration. An October surprise, or maybe a September surprise. Or, if the polls are really looking bad, an August surprise. 

For their part, border-minded patriots should seek to institutionalize what Abbott hath wrought. They need a Red Bloc for Border and National Security, complete with a homeland-sovereignty pledge that binds public officials and citizens in a Travisian commitment to the honorable defense of what’s ours. Admittedly, this bloc wouldn’t be that different from the Republican Party, and yet as a fresh ad hoc entity, it would have a stronger focus and fewer negatives. Not all Republicans would wish to join, but it would be easier for Democrats and others to join a group with no elephant emblems. 

And once this Red Bloc was established, it would be useful for member states to infill all the needed mechanisms for solidarity and common defense—er, cooperation. As I argued here last year, what a wonderful world it would be if Red could pursue its bliss of secure borders, low taxes, less wokeness, gasoline-powered cars, and a hard no on transgenderism. Thanks to Greg Abbott and his allies, we’re now well on our way. 

The post Texas Rallies the Red States Amid Immigration Crisis appeared first on The American Conservative.

Will the U.S. Even Have an Election Result in 2024?

Politics

Will the U.S. Even Have an Election Result in 2024?

A strengthened federalism is the solution to whatever outrageous fortune brings– even a protracted and violent election. 

What are the chances that the 2024 presidential election will not dissolve into chaos? In our mind’s eye, we can already see it: long lines, delays, grainy video of somebody doing something, court orders, injunctions, amici curiae stacked like cordwood. Protestors and provocateurs. Oath Keepers and Antifa. Thick blue lines of cops, clouds of tear gas, maybe even national guardsmen and federal troops. A culmination on January 6, 2025—or perhaps the turmoil will last longer than that. 

Donald Trump may not accept any result that doesn’t leave him as the winner, yet it’s more than possible that Joe Biden and the Democrats won’t accept an outcome that doesn’t feature them as the winner—especially if it means turning the keys to the republic over to Trump. 

Already, the Trump-as-dictator, even Trump-is-Hitler, memeing is fast and furious. If it keeps up, by this time next year, the feeling among many/most/all Democrats will be that letting the Bad Orange Man return to the White House under any circumstances is akin to putting an American Führer in power. No Democrat sitting in the West Wing wants to risk being remembered as a dupe, as an American Hindenberg. 

We know that Democrats and their allies were fully ready to challenge the 2020 election results, had Trump come out ahead. Can we anticipate any less #resistance in 2024? 

For their part, Republicans are scarcely less apocalyptic. Beyond the usual accusations of vote fraud—stoutly denied by Democrats, but look here—conservatives increasingly agree that progressive dark-money forces tilted the 2020 elections. The thinking goes that the left had a Soros-ian “color revolution” in reserve four years ago, and stands ready again to pull the trigger, if need be, this year. 

Come to think of it, do we even know if Trump will be on the ballot in all 50 states? The Supreme Court might bat down, for instance, the Maine and Colorado rulings, but there will be more such Trump-swatting, especially if the 45th president is outright convicted somewhere in the months to come. Does anyone really think that Yale Law School has been graduating all those activists and lawfarers for nothing? 

But these days, the right has a goodly helping of FedSoc-type smarties, so whatever portside America does to Republicans, starboard America will figure out how to do to Democrats. 

Already, activists are looking through their loupes for loopholes in the laws. For instance, the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 was hailed as a major streamlining of an 1887 statute that had been found wanting. Yet the new rule still requires Congress to affirm the electoral college results, subject to “grounds for objections,” of which there are two gapers: “The electors of the State were not lawfully certified” and “The vote of one or more electors has not been regularly given.” With such elliptical wording, there’s no way that a clever bunch of barristers could fail to kite a legal argument for questioning, even kiboshing, the result. 

So what’s the answer? How to guarantee a fair election and a fair count? Beats me. One is reminded that the mystic chords of memory grow faint unless they are continuously tuned and harmonized—and that’s the sort of civic maintenance best done prior to a national election. In the plaintive words of George Washington University’s Peter Loge: “Democracy exists because enough people agree that it ought to exist…that requires a consensus…that is being challenged.” Speaking of challenges to the system, it’s far from certain that important political figures in either party will vouch for the validity of the 2024 elections. (And on the specific issue of ballot integrity, I do have a suggestion.) 

As for possible further challenges, if any are needed, reporter Catherine Herridge, wired in to the intelligence community (or, if one prefers, Deep State), warns of a “black swan” event.

Indeed, an unfortunate event of some kind is so easy to foresee that it barely counts as a black swan; in its predictability, even banality, it should be regarded as a mere white swan. Moreover, given the possibility of a vote-strong multi-candidate field this year, it’s possible we could see a president winning with less than 40 percent of the popular vote. The last time that happened was…1860. Gulp.

Okay, that’s enough foreboding. If you want more, turn on MSNBC or Fox News. But for a deeper historical perspective, we might recall the 1930 quote from the imprisoned-by-Mussolini Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” These vivid words are something of a cliche, but that’s in no small part because they’re applicable to so many situations—including 2024.

So if we are in an interregnum, complete with morbid symptoms, what’s ahead? One thing’s for sure: There’s going to be no return to the status quo ante Trump. To the bygone political world of George W. Bush, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and John McCain. To uncontroversial trade deals and popular foreign wars. All that, gone with the wind. 

Amidst the current morbidity, the most visible Democrats have cantered toward woke intersectionality, while Republicans have stepped toward populist anti-establishmentarianism. To be sure, plenty of middle-of-the-road figures still abide in both parties. It’s just that they are less visible on TV, or on X, the successor technology. As an aside, when Elon Musk made Twitter into X, he dashed the hopes of liberal gatekeepers who thought they could keep control of internet discourse by censoring “disinformation.” As for the censorious fist of artificial intelligence, its full effect, whatever it might be, is waiting to be born. (If conservatives are smart, they’ll figure out how to birth their own version, rather than leaving themselves at the mercy of San Francisco–made algorithms.) 

So what’s coming after the current interregnal morbidity? After the hurly burly of 2024 is lost and won? On the assumption that someone will be sitting in the Oval Office in 2025, it seems likely that half the country is going to be outraged. If Blue wins, Red is mad. If Red wins, Blue is mad. Cries of national divorce will fill the airwaves—and maybe the streets. 

Come to think of it, maybe that’s the new normal. And maybe it can even be managed. Here and here for the The American Conservative, and elsewhere, this author has described how red states and blue states might peacefully divide, constitutionally coexisting in North America. Such agree-to-disagree separation would depressurize the 2028 presidential election by lowering the stakes of national affairs—the less decided in Washington, D.C., the more room for the states to do their own thing. 

That’s the hope, because strenuous opposition to federal-government-imposed one-size-fits-all is already here, and it’s getting stronger. So it’s best to devise parallel turbines of co-generation, as opposed to orthogonal engines of war. 

We can point to one looming conflict best finessed with nuance: mifepristone, aka the abortion pill. The Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration has declared the drug to be “safe and effective,” while Republicans seem destined to overturn that decision if they take control of the FDA. If that were to happen, how would Blue react? New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has pledged to make the Garden State an abortion citadel, stockpiling the pill if need be. He has even suggested he would defy an adverse Supreme Court ruling. 

There’s a word for this defiance of federal power: nullification. Yes, that’s a concept associated with John C. Calhoun and the right, and yet Thomas Jefferson used the word, approvingly, when he was vice president of the United States. So the concept actually has a broad pedigree. And as to anything to do with abortion, if there’s one lesson of the last two years, since Dobbs, it’s this: Both sides are dug in. The chances of either side being dynamited out are, well, de minimis. Closer to de zero. Practicality commends an armistice, leaving both camps in place on their turf. To both sides of the abortion debate, the other side is reprehensible, even despicable. But since neither is going anywhere, best to have two sides, safely separated from each other. 

In fact, many other issues, too—from guns to gender to climate change—defy the pacific imposition of a central solution. So whoever is in charge in D.C. will see half the country in righteous outrage. Maybe the anti-federalist right will use “Calhounianian” as a contra-D.C. rallying cry, while the anti-federalist left will use “Jeffersonian.” To lovers of live and let live, decentralization, by any name, will smell as sweet.

By this reckoning, the white and black swans of 2024 will give birth to newly robust red and blue swans in 2025 and beyond. And this birds-of-a-feather sorting could be accelerated, even outright cemented, by changes in voting and balloting. Vote by mail? Vote by app? Vote only by paper? Vote only with valid ID? The franchise for felons? The undocumented? It’s not so hard to see Blue and Red working their respective state systems to preordain the partisan outcome. 

In the meantime, we could see exciting experimentation among the states. Could a state create a Nevada-ish enterprise zone for some new technology—be it crypto, medical, or Mars-bound? Could a state venture into some sort of post-liberal integralism? Or, at the other end of the social-issue spectrum, could a state make itself into a haven for polyamory and transgenderism? 

Of course, this much state-by-state diversity could confound, even anger, many. So most probably, to stave off trouble, the blue states and the red states will form themselves into blocs for the sake of solidarity and self-defense. 

But what of the national government? What of the federal income tax? What of U.S. foreign policy? All weighty questions, for sure. Yet the best answers for Americans will come from where they’ve always come: from freedom. Two and a half centuries ago, Americans started this great experiment with no destination in mind, only optimism that the future could be made better. We have never stopped experimenting since. So there’s no reason now to stop pursuing the right mixes of life, liberty, property, and, oh yes, happiness. Admittedly, at times the situation might look morbid, but our history tells us there’s good reason to expect a new flush of health. 

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