The Amazing Trump-Wingnut Policy Conveyor Belt - 0 views
talkingpointsmemo.com/...p-wingnut-policy-conveyor-belt
legitimacy discourse politics extremism radical candidate 2016
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Over the course of just a few days Donald Trump has gone from saying that we might have to close down mosques and create a Muslim registry to saying that not only will we do this but we have to do it and anything less is an utter capitulation.
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In other words, rapidly evolving from refusing to rule out a draconian policy to affirmatively endorsing it to being its leading advocate.
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With his Muslim ID card and database, Wednesday he said he wouldn't rule out creating such a system. By the end of the day he was telling NBC News he would "absolutely" create such a system.
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just as we saw in the summer with immigration writ large, the progression doesn't end with Trump. We've had three presidential elections since the 9/11 terror attacks and no presidential candidate has ever proposed shutting down mosques in the United States or creating a special registry and identification cards for Muslims living in the United States.
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So yesterday Megyn Kelly asked Marco Rubio whether he'd shut down radical mosques like Trump. He tried to deflect the question by saying that it wasn't about mosques but closing down any facility that was promoting radicalism. In other words, Rubio, while clearly not eager to answer the question, pointedly refused to rule out following Trump's lead.
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It is a very good example of how Trump is not only shaping the debate on the right but rapidly mainstreaming ideas that were as recently as a week ago considered entirely outside the realm of mainstream political discourse.
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It's particularly effective with the less sophisticated and principled candidates like Rubio. Jeb Bush said flatly this morning that Trump's database proposal is "just wrong." But Ben Carson quickly took Trump's lead comparing Syrian refugees to "mad dogs." The difference is that Marco Rubio could very well be president in 18 months. Jeb Bush won't be.
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this is no longer a matter of Trump yakking on about building a gilded 100-foot wall along the southern border and having Mexico agree to pay for it. Trump is now proposing things that sound like they put millions of American citizens and resident aliens on a road to something like the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.