IF YOU BELIEVE EVERY EMAIL FORWARD YOU RECEIVE, NO WONDER YOU FEEL EXTREMELY ALIENATED

A post at Breitbart draws attention to an Ipsos survey conducted last month that finds a large degree of alienation in the American public -- particularly among Republicans:

More than half (58%) of Americans don’t identify with what America has become. Almost as many (53%) feel like a “stranger in their own country”. This sense of loss is particularly pronounced when we look at party identification: while 45% of Democrats don’t identify with what America has become, a whopping 72% of Republicans don’t....



... fully 64% of Republicans are moderately or strongly nativist, including over a quarter (26%) who agree with all three of the nativist statements (compared to only 31% moderately or strongly nativist among Democrats)....

Ipsos VP Chris Jackson writes, "Such trends clearly show [Donald] Trump’s appeal among the Republican base."

Why are these voters -- Jackson says they tend to be whiter, older, and live in the South -- so alienated? There are plenty of legitimate reasons: the economic downturn, the disappearance of blue-collar middle-class jobs. The country is experiencing demographic changes to which these voters seem not to be able to adjust. The same goes for changing mores on sex and gender.

But part of the problem is that a lot of these people believes things that just aren't so. They and their alienated peers spread some of this misinformation themselves, via email and Facebook and other online forms of communication.

And now they have a presidential candidate who's just like them.

First Donald Trump asserted, on two occasions, that he watch televised footage of "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in Paterson, New Jersey, celebrating the 9/11 attacks on the day they occurred. Then he retweeted these bogus statistics on crime:

"@SeanSean252: @WayneDupreeShow @Rockprincess818 @CheriJacobus pic.twitter.com/5GUwhhtvyN"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2015

Regarding the celebrating Muslims in New Jersey, Snopes has debunked all the rumors spread over the years via email.

In Cedar Grove, NJ, a customer saw the owner of a Dunkin Donuts store burn the U.S. flag. In another Dunkin Donuts store in Little Falls, a customer saw a U.S. flag on the floor with Arabic writing all over it. In Wayne, NJ the employees of Arabic background were cheering behind the counter when the heard about the attacks. A customer throw his coffee at them and phoned the police.

None of this happened. Nor did this happen:

My mom's friend was in the National Liquidator store in the Forest Avenue Plaza when the crashes happened.

The workers, owners, etc. were all cheering and laughing.

Or this:

September 11th, a Budweiser employee was making a delivery to a convenience store in a town called McFarland [California]. He knew of the tragedy that had occurred in New York. He entered the business to find two Arabs whooping and hollering and really cheering it up. It was obvious they were elated with what had happened earlier. The Budweiser employee went to his truck, called his boss and told him of the very upsetting event. He didn't feel he could be in that store with those horrible people. His boss told him, "Do you think you could go in there long enough to pull every Budweiser product and item our beverage company sells there? We'll never deliver to them again."

The employee walked in, proceeded to pull every single product his beverage company provided and left with an incredible grin on his face. He told them never to bother and call for a delivery again.

As for the crime statistics, Think Progress has debunked them, as has the New York Daily News:

From the FBI's 2014 report on U.S. homicides, of the 3,021 Caucasian murder victims, 2,488 of their assailants were white, or 82 percent.

Trump's backed statistics ring just as wrong for whites killed by blacks. While the fear-mongering graphic claims it's at 81 percent, it's really 15 percent, according to the FBI's statistics -- much less than the mogul's tweet would suggest.

The other "data" suggested blacks killed by whites were at 2 percent while blacks killed by blacks were at 97 percent. Again, wrong.

The real numbers behind blacks killed by whites in 2014 are at least three times more than Trump's tweet suggested, at 7 percent. Blacks killed by blacks are more than 10 percent less than the bogus numbers in the presidential candidate's tweet.

The image itself could be based off of phony numbers. While it's cited from San Francisco's "Crime Statistics Bureau" as data from 2015, the city's annual police reports end at 2014, and do not break down homicides by race.

If you're the kind of person who receives and retransmits this sort of undigested, unverified alarmist nonsense on a daily basis, then of course you're going to feel especially alienated by your country. Look at all those murderous, white-hating black people! Look at all those defiant Muslims dancing for joy right under our noses in our own country while real Americans suffer!

Donald Trump is exactly like everyone's email-forwarding racist uncle. No wonder everyone's email-forwarding racist uncle plans to vote for him.

IF SOCIAL SPENDING IS A PLOT TO WIN DEPENDENT VOTERS FOREVER, IT'S NOT WORKING

Want to know why so many poor white voters vote for the GOP -- the party that boasts of its plans to shred the social safety net? Alec MacGillis says that, in fact, these voters don't vote against their self-interest -- they just don't vote at all:

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

... Voter participation is low among the poorest Americans, and in many parts of the country that have moved red, the rates have fallen off the charts. West Virginia ranked 50th for turnout in 2012; also in the bottom 10 were other states that have shifted sharply red in recent years, including Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.

In addition, MacGillis writes, voters just above these poor non-voters on the economic ladder resent the poorer citizens' dependency -- and this is not necessarily racial resentment. It's true among mostly white populations:

The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder -- the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

... Where opposition to the social safety net has long been fed by the specter of undeserving inner-city African-Americans -- think of Ronald Reagan’s notorious “welfare queen” -- in places like Pike County it’s fueled, more and more, by people’s resentment over rising dependency they see among their own neighbors, even their own families. “It’s Cousin Bobby -- ‘he’s on Oxy and he’s on the draw and we’re paying for him,’” [Jim] Cauley [a Democratic politcal consultant in eastern Kentucky] said. “If you need help, no one begrudges you taking the program -- they’re good-hearted people. It’s when you’re able-bodied and making choices not to be able-bodied.” The political upshot is plain, Mr. Cauley added. “It’s not the people on the draw that’s voting against” the Democrats, he said. “It’s everyone else.”

But wait -- hasn't every Republican told us that government social spending is a sinister -- and devastatingly effective -- Democratic plot to win every election forever by increasing the population's dependence on government? During the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney complained that Democrats were trying to win the election with "free stuff," then he complained after the election about a Democratic strategy that promised one "big gift" after another. This year, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie have picked up on the "free stuff" rhetoric, as has Ben Carson:

Carson ... said he had “no desire whatsoever to hurt the poor ... but I believe in true compassion, providing the poor with a mechanism to climb the ladder of success,” Carson said.

“False compassion is patting them on the head and saying, ‘You can’t take care of yourself and I’m going to give you food stamps, a housing subsidy and free health care and all the things you need so you can stay dependent and vote for me.’”

Republicans believe that the link between government social spending and votes operates with the force of natural law -- and that too much spending leads to the death of democracy. They regularly quote an aphorism they variously ascribe to Tocqueville, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin:

A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

Sometimes quoted as:

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

The actual source is a 1951 Daily Oklahoman column by Elmer T. Peterson, who attributes it to a Scottish judge and historian named Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813) -- although the quote doesn't appear in any of Tytler's works.

But Republicans believe this. They believe voters automatically vote for whoever gives them "free stuff," and that if you give more and more voters "free stuff," eventually there'll be more "takers" than "makers" and the nation will collapse. (Needless to say, they believe we've approached this point in the Obama years. They call it "the death spiral.")

But this actually doesn't work. The so-called takers don't vote. The neighbors of the so-called takers vote against the party that favors social spending. It's actually a terrible way to win votes, if winning votes is the point.

It might have an electoral payoff if Democrats made an effort to turn out poor voters, or if Democrats worked to raise the standard of living of their slightly more prosperous but still struggling neighbors. (A rising tide that lifted all boats, or at least the bottom 99% of votes, would be good politics because it would be good for the country.)

But government spending not a fiendishly clever plot to steal elections in perpetuity. Just the opposite.

REFUGEE-HATERS, THESE ARE YOUR ANTI-SEMITIC ALLIES

To a lot of Americans, fear of Syrian refugees -- and hatred of all Muslims -- is just simple patriotism. For some Poles, nationalist beliefs and anger at Muslim refugees are inevitably accompanied by Jew-hatred:

Anti-migrant resentment boiled over into anti-Semitism in Poland on Wednesday, when a protest against taking in Muslim refugees ended with the burning of an effigy of an ultra-Orthodox Jew holding the flag of the European Union.

Several dozen people were reported in attendance at the rally, in the western Polish city of Wroclaw, which was held in response to last Friday’s Paris terrorist attacks....

The crown shouted: “United Catholic Poland! National radicalism! Down with the European Union!” The demonstration was organized by the National Radical Camp and All-Polish Youth.

“Our duty, the duty of lawmakers and the government, is to say that we won’t take a single Islamist in to Poland because Poland is for Poles,” proclaimed one of the demonstration’s speakers. .

At the end of the demonstration one of the participants set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a haredi Jew as the crowd chanted, “God, honor and fatherland!”

Here's video, posted to YouTube by the white supremacist American Freedom Party:



Could this happen in America? Maybe, though most on the American anti-Muslim right regard themselves as friends of Jews and Israel. More likely to be burned in effigy in this country are Mexicans, liberals, or Democratic politicians, up to and (especially) including the president. Not that that would be any better.

TRUMP MIGHT LOSE, BUT THESE HACKS AREN'T GOING TO BEAT HIM

The Wall Street Journal and Politico report that GOP forces are coming after Donald Trump. Oh, I bet he's just trembling in fear.

From the Politico story:

John Kasich has attacked Donald Trump relentlessly in debates and now his super PAC is planning to invest $2.5 million in the most aggressive takedown of the poll leader yet -- on behalf of an increasingly anxious GOP establishment.

The attack, according to a blueprint shared with POLITICO, will play out over the next two months on radio, TV, mail and online in New Hampshire. Strategists with the pro-Kasich group, called New Day for America, say the budget for the anti-Trump campaign is likely to grow.

Oh, wow -- John Kasich is planning to take Trump on! How can Trump possibly survive that onslaught?

Wait, it gets better. Do you know who the Kasich super PAC's adman is?

Fred Davis, the group’s colorful Hollywood-based ad-maker who is best-known for producing the “Demon Sheep” ad in the 2010 California Senate race, is working on a pair of anti-Trump TV ads.

Yup, possibly the worst political ad for a major-party candidate ever, in the service of Carly Fiorina's failed Senate campaign.



He's also the genius behind this 2010 ad:



More:

The group’s first volley came Thursday, when it released an ad that pictured the billionaire side by side with President Barack Obama. “On the job training for president does not work,” says the ad, which invokes last week’s tragic Paris terrorist attacks. The group is currently spending about $600,000 to air the commercial, though David said more airtime is being purchased.

That would be this ad:



Wow, that's a real attack on Trump -- blink and you miss the split-second when he appears on the screen next to Obama. Following that, the ad has way too much Kasich. Yeah, I know it's a Kasich ad, but ... he's John Kasich. If you really want people to reconsider their support for Trump, you absolutely don't want to tell them their alternative is ... John Kasich.

The effort reported by the Journal has somewhat more promise:

The most concerted effort is Trump Card LLC, the self-styled guerrilla campaign being launched by Liz Mair, the former online communications director of the Republican National Committee....

Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant, said in an interview that he is prepared to make ads for the new group.

Wilson made this ad, which ran in the 2014 midterms. I can see why voters might respond to it, though I have no idea if any voters actually did:



But this seems like a strategy for failure:

The group’s memo said it would be pitching opposition research to media in early-voting states, as well as radio and television ads and Web videos that attract media attention based on their “outrageousness and boundary-breaking or bizarre nature.”

One possible ad would link Mr. Trump’s views and style to his celebrity foe, Rosie O’Donnell, in hopes of provoking a reaction from Mr. Trump, according to the memo.

No. Trump is clearly impervious to opposition research. Early in his ascent, we learned about his evasion of military service in the Vietnam era and his apparent marital rape of his then-wife Ivana. Nothing stuck.

And you think you're going to get Trump by encouraging him to lash out at someone? That's playing to his strength. If you try to argue that he's actually like Rosie O'Donnell, he'll just lash out at her in an even uglier way -- to the delight of his fans, who despise her. And remember, his voters don't think such verbal assaults prove he's unfit to be president -- they think the assaults he's a brawler. They see Trump's beefs as evidence confirming his suitability to take on ISIS.

This might be somewhat effective:

Other possible tactics include fake pro-Trump ads that show him supporting socialized medicine, seizing property through eminent domain and taking other positions that stray from GOP orthodoxy; using a Trump impersonator to show him insulting people; and attacking his business record in “stark, nasty terms.”

If these ads look like pro-Trump ads, people might be momentarily fooled. But Trump's past support for positions the GOP regards as heretical hasn't hurt him yet, and probably never will.

To understand why, think about Ben Carson. He goes to a lot of trouble to describe himself as a former bad kid who was saved by Jesus. Conservatives Christians love the conversion narrative. Secular conservatives love conversion narratives, too -- remember, Saint Ronald Reagan was a convert to the GOP, a fact he loved to weaponize, to his admirers' delight:

"Mr. President, in talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed mistakes of the past and you've blamed the Congress. Does any of the blame belong to you?" asked ABC White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson.

"Yes, because for many years I was a Democrat," replied Mr. Reagan.

Trump might stumble eventually, though I think he's a strong favorite to win the nomination. But if he does tumble, he'll be taken down by someone who out-demagogues him -- maybe Ted Cruz. He won't be undone by political hacks.

GOODNESS, CAN'T WE ALL AGREE THAT DONALD TRUMP IS THE REAL VICTIM HERE?

The mean old liberal media is being unfair to poor Donald Trump -- by accurately quoting his responses to reporters' questions! That's what we learn from "How the Media Smeared Donald Trump as a Nazi," a piece by Breitbart's Joel Pollak.

Pollak sees the "smear" proceeding in steps -- undoubtedly, in his mind, dictated by a shadow liberal politburo:

Step 1: Seed.
Step 2: Amplify.
Step 3: Distort.
Step 4: Smear
Step 5: Nazi.

Pollak writes:

Note that none of these esteemed journalists bothers to question their own assumptions, or to ask Trump precisely whether he is talking about American citizens or about foreign nationals. They chase their own questions down a broken telephone line.

That's an interesting analogy, because the "broken telephone line" would seem to be the candidate himself, who can't seem to process the questions reporters are asking him, a skill you'd think you might have developed if you've been a globally famous public figure for decades.

But Pollak's rage is nothing compared to Rush Limbaugh's:

[Trump's] probably worn out and spent, and there's the usual crowd of autograph seekers and supporters and fans, and amongst them is a Drive-By Media reporter....

... they report that Trump "demands a database and registration for all Muslims," when he didn't say it! He never said it. It's a Journalism 101 trick. It's right out of the manual they teach you at the first year of journalism school in how to destroy political opponents or powerful people you don't like. It's that common a technique.

Pollak implies that there's an off-the-shelf technique that all liberal media apparatchiks learn in order to destroy enemies, but Limbaugh talks of an actual manual. Okay, maybe not a literal manual -- but he knows that character assassination techniques are taught in J-school as coursework, dammit!

Ann Coulter is even angrier -- here's just a sample from her Twitter feed:

MEDIA IS TOTALLY LYING ABOUT TRUMP MUSLIM DATABASE! He was talking about a WALL - NBC reporter was obsessed with Muslim registration.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 20, 2015

It’s the REPORTER who keeps talking about registration; TRUMP (barely listening) only talks @ a wall, ppl coming legally& good management.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 20, 2015

FULL TAPE: Obsessive compulsive punk journalist neurotically bringing up Muslim registration; Trump -barely listening- kept talking @ a WALL

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 20, 2015

Trump was barely listening to MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard when he was asking about this. Trump was barely listening to Yahoo's Hunter Walker when he was asking about this. Clearly the common thread is ... evil liberal reporters! The fact that Trump thinks he's qualified for the presidency of the United States but can't grasp the import of these questions couldn't possibly be the real issue here, could it?

So, according to Coulter, Trump totally didn't agree to totalitarian treatment of Muslims, and it's libelous to say otherwise -- though, now that you mention it, that totalitarian treatment sounds kinda sensible to Coulter:

Back to 'R U f-ing kidding me?' (Muslim vs Jewish registn) Paris, T. Van Gogh, 9/11, Bos Marathn, Ft Hd, Diaper bomber, Times Sq bomber etc

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 20, 2015

So, according to Coulter, it's absolutely awful to say that Trump is in favor of this perfectly appropriate proposal!

What Trump said might have been off-putting to a lot of people, even some Republicans -- but, on the other hand, he now gets to be the Whiner of the Week. Previous winners were the entire main-stage debate field (a group award after the CNBC debate) an Ben Carson (whose biography the media had the nerve to examine). Trump's victory could be good for a poll bump. We'll see.

COWARDICE IS THE NEW BRAVERY

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, Phil Klay -- an Iraq War combat veteran and the author of the National Book Award-winning short story collection Redeployment -- took to Twitter to upbraid Americans for their fear of Syrian refugees. The following tweets in particular should inspire a lot of people to think seriously about what they've been saying in the past week (but won't):

13. If we want to be the kind of nation that others will follow,

— Phil Klay (@PhilKlay) November 19, 2015

14. the kind of nation capable of forging strong links in the Muslim world against extremism,

— Phil Klay (@PhilKlay) November 19, 2015

15. then we have to behave like that kind of nation. I get that people are scared.

— Phil Klay (@PhilKlay) November 19, 2015

16. But it's only during frightening times when you get to find out if your country really deserves to call itself the 'home of the brave.'

— Phil Klay (@PhilKlay) November 19, 2015

However, as Paul Krugman notes, Americans -- or at least right-wing Americans -- don't want to act like citizens of "the home of the brave":

The French themselves are making a point of staying calm, indeed of going out to cafes to show that they refuse to be intimidated. But [Erick] Erickson declared on his website that he won’t be going to see the new “Star Wars” movie on opening day, because “there are no metal detectors at American theaters.”

And it's not just fear of (carefully screened) refugees that instills fear in conservatives, as Krugman notes:

Remember the great Ebola scare of 2014? The threat of a pandemic, like the threat of a terrorist attack, was real. But it was greatly exaggerated, thanks in large part to hype from the same people now hyping the terrorist danger.

Krugman has a theory about this:

What explains the modern right’s propensity for panic? Part of it, no doubt, is the familiar point that many bullies are also cowards. But I think it’s also linked to the apocalyptic mind-set that has developed among Republicans during the Obama years.

Think about it. From the day Mr. Obama took office, his political foes have warned about imminent catastrophe. Fiscal crisis! Hyperinflation! Economic collapse, brought on by the scourge of health insurance! And nobody on the right dares point out the failure of the promised disasters to materialize, or suggest a more nuanced approach.

But why go apocalyptic? I'd say it's for a couple of reasons.

Some of the people who think they're in mortal danger immediately pat themselves on the back for their brave stand against the folks who are threatening them. I'm the target! they think. I'm the center of the universe! This story is all about me! An example of this is Townhall's Kurt Schlichter, who lives in lovely Manhattan Beach, California. He tweeted on the night of the Paris attacks:

Loaded 5 magazines as I watched the news reports. When they come here - and they will come here - we are the front line fighters. #2A

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) November 14, 2015

The same could be said of Erickson (who thinks ISIS is coming to get him in Macon, Georgia) -- though he's not even pretending to be brave:

I’m really glad I didn’t get tickets on opening day to see Star Wars. Seriously.

I have no confidence in this Administration to keep us all safe, particularly in light of President Obama’s statement today that there’s really no way to stop this stuff.

There are no metal detectors at American theaters.

I think I’ll wait till Star Wars is less a threat scenario.

In this case, the message is: I'm being targeted here in Macon, Georgia, by an enemy so dangerous even I, an armed True Patriot, might not be equal to it. Damn you, Obama!

It always comes back to conservatism's domestic political enemies.

Fear, of course, drives voters to the polls -- that's why Republicans win all the non-presidential elections, and why they get something like 47% of the vote or more in all the presidential elections, no matter what blithering idiot they nominate. Democrats are urged to vote against Republicans because Republican policies are misguided; Republicans are urged to vote against Democrats because otherwise we're all going to die, or at least lose all of our freedoms.

Electorally, fear works. And day-to-day Republican rhetoric lays the groundwork for moments like this -- if you're already being told every day that President Obama is trying to kill you and destroy your freedoms, and then a deadly virus hits (a few people in) America or a terrorist cell strikes at a place (vaguely) similar to your hometown, you're already primed.

So expect more cowardice. It's a winning strategy.

THIS IS WHY IT'S OK TO ASK TRUMP LEADING QUESTIONS

In my last post, I said that Kevin Drum was right to note that Donald Trump didn't exactly say to Hunter Walker of Yahoo Politics that he'd impose Nazi-style measures to restrict the rights of Muslims in the U.S. -- he just said he'd look at a lot of measures, and failed to reject the Nazi-style measures Walker brought up.

But now Trump appears to have specifically endorsed a mandatory database for Muslims in America:

Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for president, told NBC News on Thursday night that he “would certainly implement” a database system tracking Muslims in the United States.

“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” Trump said in Newton, Iowa, in between campaign town hall events....

When asked whether Muslims are legally obligated to sign into the database, Trump responded, “They have to be — they have to be.”

As MSNBC's (non-embeddable) video shows, Trump is asked, by reporter Vaughn Hillyard, "Should there be a database system that tracks the Muslims here in this country?" The following video picks up with Trump's response:

TRUMP: There should be a lot of systems, beyond database. We should have a lot of systems. And today you can do it. But right now we have to have a border, we have to have strength, we have to have a wall, and we cannot let what's happening to this country happen anymore.

HILLYARD: But that's something your White House would like to implement.

TRUMP: Oh, I would certainly implement that. Absolutely.

HILLYARD: What do you think the effect of that would be? How would that work?

TRUMP: It would stop people from coming in illegally. We have to stop people from coming into our country illegally.

Now, there's Trump's escape hatch if he decides to walk this back. Hillyard has asked about a database to track "Muslims here in this country," and Trump seems to be talking about Muslims coming into this country. But if the two are them are speaking at cross purposes, Trump never tries to pin Hillyard down on what he's asking, even though he's been on the spot about oppressive measures for much of a day. Clearly Trump doesn't have any problem with your belief that he would do these things.

Hillyard goes on to ask, "Do you go to mosques and sign these people up?" And Trump replies, "Different places. You sign 'em up at different--" Can he really not know there that Hillyard is asking about Muslims already living here?

Well, maybe. But if you don't think Trump is planning to oppress citizens, then you think he's incapable of processing a not particularly fine distinction like this. Even that, in a potential president of the United States is frightening.

Here's what follows:

Later, Trump was repeatedly asked to explain the difference between requiring Muslims to enter their information into a database and making Jewish people register in Nazi Germany. He responded four times by saying, “You tell me.”

He doesn't even get it. Does Trump think imposing Nazi-style restrictions on U.S. Muslims is okay, or is he incapable of seeing how the two policies resemble each other? Evil or stupid?

Well, good for Hunter Walker for starting this conversation. Yes, he asked leading questions, but now we've seen all this from Trump. Too bad it will probably push him to 40% in the GOP polls.

TRUMP WAS ASKED LEADING QUESTIONS, BUT THE QUESTIONS WERE STILL VALID

On the subject of Donald Trump's headline-grabbing refusal to reject Nazi tactics, I think Kevin Drum has a point:

It would be one thing if Trump floated the idea himself of warrantless searches and special IDs [for Muslims in America]. It's quite another if a reporter brings them up and Trump tap dances a little bit. Needless to say, in a better world Trump would have explicitly denounced all these ideas. Obviously we don't live in that world. Still, the only thing Trump actually said here is that we're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. The rest was just a reporter fishing for a headline.

Drum is correct to say that Hunter Walker of Yahoo News threw out a couple of scenarios in his Trump interview and Trump was noncommittal, offering the kind of response we generally get from him when his lack of grounding in an issue leaves him incapable of an intelligent and informed answer. (Although, yes, he shouldn't need to be informed to reject the ideas Walker floated.)

Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.

“We’re going to have to -- we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

I agree with Drum: It's important to note that Trump didn't actually endorse "yellow star"-style identification for Muslims in America, or endorse warrantless searches or a registry of Muslims.

But it's worth knowing that if he's elected he plans, by his own admission, to adopt security measures that have been "frankly unthinkable." It's worth knowing that he wouldn't reject the approaches Walker enumerated out of hand. It's entirely possible that, when confronted with headlines such as "Trump Won't Rule Out Database, Special ID for Muslims in US," he'll double down and explicitly endorse special IDs, warrantless surveillance, and/or the database.

And it might be nice to get a few other presidential candidates on the record on all this. How far would they go? Don't we need to know that? When even "moderates" such as Jeb Bush and John Kasich are essentially calling for the United States to rebrand itself as an anti-Muslim Judeo-Christian nation, why shouldn't we ask how they'd treat Muslims who've done no harm to America?

Drum writes:

We know how to fight dangerous people. We know how to fight terrorism. And we don't have to shred the Constitution to do it. Instead of fishing for headlines and stoking the latest round of fatuous fearmongering from Republicans, maybe we'd be better served if reporters started asking them hard questions instead.

Is Drum saying that Republicans won't stoke fear unless reporters goad them? If he thinks that, he and I have been living in very different Americas, and not just since Friday's attacks in Paris.

Yes, ask Republicans hard questions -- but in all likelihood they'll just respond with the same poll-tested talking points. Then, two years from now, we could wake up with one of these people in the Oval Office executing plans to oppress innocent Americans in ways even Trump never dreamed of. (Back in 2000, we didn't George W. Bush was going to do what he did, did we?)

So why not prod and provoke the SOBs? If they have a sense of decency and respect for American ideals, they'll make short work of the questions. And if not, forewarned is forearmed.

REFUGEE VETTERS, HOW DO THEY WORK?

I'm having flashbacks as I listen to conservatives talk about the mysterious -- but presumed to be slapdash -- process of vetting Syrian refugees. Yesterday a woman named Arnessa, a Muslim who came to America at the age of twelve as a refugee from war in the former Yugoslavia, pointed out in a series of tweets that the vetting process is long, bureaucratic, and almost absurdly detailed. Here's some of what she posted:

You have to submit ALL your documents. Birth certificates, report cards from school, IDs, driver licenses, passports, old utility bills.

— Arnessa (@Rrrrnessa) November 18, 2015

You have to provide their contact information as well. If some of them are dead you have to provide proof they are dead or missing.

— Arnessa (@Rrrrnessa) November 18, 2015

You tell your story again to a different official. And again. And again. And then again. Lets call this month 18 now.

— Arnessa (@Rrrrnessa) November 18, 2015

They ask you to submit more proof. You have to do a retina eye scan. You have to get a medical exam. You do another interview.

— Arnessa (@Rrrrnessa) November 18, 2015

And on and on.

This is not a secret to Republican elected officials and right-wing political insiders. It's known to them, or at least it's knowable.

But their prime directive is to make Americans hate the president, the Democratic Party, and liberalism, as well as Muslims, of course, and they know the public doesn't know any of this. So they cynically portray the system as likely to be run by incompetents who do a half-assed job.

We've been through this before, in the run-up to the Iraq War. There were inspectors in Iraq -- and they knew what they were doing. Bob Drogin of the L.A. Times reported on how much they were able to learn and how certain they were -- based on real evidence -- that the defector known as Curveball was fabricating stories about sites with which he was somewhat familiar:

The raid by the American-led biological weapons experts lasted 3 1/2 hours. It was long enough to prove Curveball had lied.

Djerf al Nadaf was on a dusty road lined with auto repair shops and small factories, near the former Tuwaitha nuclear facility and a sewage-filled tributary of the Tigris River.

Behind a high wall, a two-story grain silo adjoined the warehouse that Curveball had identified as the truck assembly facility.

"That's the one where the mobile [bioweapons] labs were supposed to be," said a former U.N. inspector who worked with the U.S. and other intelligence agencies. "That's the one we were interested in."

The doors were locked, so Boston microbiologist Rocco Casagrande climbed on a white U.N. vehicle, yanked open a metal flap in the wall, and crawled inside. After scrambling over a huge pile of corn, he scraped two samples of residue from cracks in the cement floor, two more from holes in the wall and one from a discarded shower basin outside.

Back at the Canal Hotel that afternoon, he tested the samples for bacterial or viral DNA. He was searching for any signs that germs were produced at the site or any traces of the 1998 bio-weapons accident. Test results were all negative.

"No threat agents detected," Casagrande wrote in his computer journal that night. "Got to climb on a jeep and crawl into buildings and play second-story man, but otherwise spent the day in the lab."

A British inspector, who had helped bring the intelligence file from New York, found another surprise.

Curveball had said the germ trucks could enter the warehouse from either end. But there were no garage doors and a solid, 6-foot-high wall surrounded most of the building. The wall British intelligence saw in 1997 satellite photos clearly made impossible the traffic patterns Curveball had described.

U.N. teams also raided the other sites Curveball had named. They interrogated managers, seized documents and used ground-penetrating radar, according to U.N. reports.

The U.N. inspectors "could find nothing to corroborate Curveball's reporting," the CIA's Iraq Survey Group reported last year.

On March 7, 2003, Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, told the Security Council that a series of searches had found "no evidence" of mobile biological production facilities in Iraq. It drew little notice at the time.

The invasion of Iraq began two weeks later.

The abilities of the inspectors are made abundantly clear in Drogin's book Curveball. They'd have been able to detect trace elements of weapons activity even at scrubbed sites. They had the time to inspect many sites to their satisfaction. They were clear on the fact that what they were told they'd find wasn't there.

They were right. We know that now. But in America, Dennis Miller, speaking for the entire pro-war right, got the last word:

With regard to the inspectors in Iraq, Miller asked, "How long do we have to wait for these morons?" He compared Hans Blix to Inspector Clouseau--and pictured the U.N. teams "driving around in the Scooby-Doo van" looking for weapons. "The only 'smoking gun' I need to see is the one they use to kill Saddam Hussein."

It's happening again. Refugee vetters can't possibly know what they're doing! They must be bumbling idiots! The people saying this know better, or ought to. But they know the public doesn't know better. And so they cynically take advantage, because that's what they do.

Y KANT ANDREW McCARTHY READ?

National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy wants you to know that President Obama is a an evil lying traitor because -- says McCarthy -- federal law insists on a religious test for refugees seeking asylum, contrary to what the president says:

In his latest harangue against Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and other Americans opposed to his insistence on continuing to import thousands of Muslim refugees from Syria and other parts of the jihad-ravaged Middle East, Obama declaimed:

When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.

Really? Under federal law, the executive branch is expressly required to take religion into account in determining who is granted asylum. Under the provision governing asylum (section 1158 of Title 8, U.S. Code), an alien applying for admission

must establish that … religion [among other things] … was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.

Um, no. That's not what the law says -- or at least that's not what the law in its full, ellipsis-free form says. Here's that passage unedited (but with emphasis added):

To establish that the applicant is a refugee within the meaning of such section, the applicant must establish that race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.

Unlike McCarthy, I'm not a lawyer, much less a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. I've never been involved in federal prosecutions of prominent terrorists. But I know the meaning of the word "or." It's not the same as "and." Religion is one of the possible reasons for persecution that can justify an application for refugee status. An applicant must be subject to one of the listed forms of persecution or another.

McCarthy continues in this vein:

Moreover, to qualify for asylum in the United States, the applicant must be a “refugee” as defined by federal law. That definition (set forth in Section 1101(a)(42)(A) of Title , U.S. Code) also requires the executive branch to take account of the alien’s religion:

The term “refugee” means (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality … and who is unable or unwilling to return to … that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of … religion [among other things] …[.]

The law requires a “religious test.”

Again, no. It is not true that the law "requires the executive branch to take account of the alien’s religion." Sorry, Andrew, but there's that pesky word "or" again (I've added extra-special emphasis just so you don't miss it):

The term “refugee” means (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or...

Yes, or...

political opinion....

Is McCarthy stupid? Or does he just assume his readers are?

I assume he knows he's bending the truth. But he's doing it in the service of a higher calling -- or, rather, two higher callings: fanning the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry and inspiring the rabble to hate Democrats. It's disgraceful -- but who'll call him on this disinformation? So what he's saying is likely to be ensconced as a right-wing meme very soon. Expect an email forward from your right-wing uncle any day now, and expect to hear this a lot on Fox.

JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELVES THAT PARIS WILL MAKE GOP VOTERS TURN TO INSIDERS

The political establishment keeps lulling itself to sleep with the soothing fairytale that Donald Trump and Ben Carson will fade eventually. The new twist is that the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris will be the catalyst for a reassessment of the two non-politicians on the part of GOP voters.

Um, I don't think so. Two new polls have been conducted entirely after the attacks -- and Trump leads both. First, New Hampshire:

After losing a few percentage points in a WBUR survey two weeks ago, Trump is more firmly on top in the latest poll ... with 23 percent of likely GOP primary voters choosing him or leaning his way.

... Live telephone interviews were conducted Nov. 14-15.

Trump is 10 points ahead of Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, who are tied for second at 13%. Yes, Carson is slipping, but still -- he's in second place, in a state that usually embraces moderates and is cool toward members of the religious right.

And in Florida:

Fla poll: Trump 36%, Rubio 18%, Carson 15%, Cruz 10%, Bush 9%

A newly released poll of likely Florida Republican primary voters by the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative shows Donald Trump with a two-to-one advantage over everybody else ...

This survey was conducted November 15 and 16.

And in a national Morning Consult poll conducted mostly after the attacks (November 13-16), it's Trump 38%, Carson 19%, Rubio and Cruz 7%, Bush 6%.

And yet we're still reading the likes of this:

Donald Trump and Ben Carson have demonstrated more staying power than anyone predicted. But now, after the terrorist attacks on an American ally, Republican elders think their party’s flirtation with inexperience is nearing its end.

The reemergence of foreign policy atop the Republican agenda will force voters to reevaluate the outsider candidates, particularly as both Trump and Carson display a lack of knowledge about national security and the terrorist threat, party stalwarts said.

... Indeed, in interviews with current and former GOP chairs, veteran operatives, lobbyists and strategists, the long-held conviction that neither Trump nor Carson will win the Republican nomination has only strengthened since the attacks in Paris last week.

Yeah, keep dreaming.

What has me terrified is the possibility that Ann Coulter might have been right on the night of the attacks:

They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 14, 2015

We all assume that Trump can't possibly win next November, but a few months ago we all assumed he couldn't sustain his lead in the Republican race any longer than Herman Cain did four years ago. "Trump can't win a general election" could be the new "Trump can't win the primaries."

Why am I worried? Look at the Clinton-Trump matchup polling in states with a lot of electoral votes that traditionally choose a Democratic presidential candidate -- like Florida in the poll I just cited:

Hillary Clinton ... continues to trail in head-to-head matchups with the Republican frontrunners, trailing Carson 50 percent to 41 percent, and Trump 49 percent to 41 percent.

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Trump leads Clinton by 2.4% in Florida. Trump and Clinton are tied in Pennsylvania. Clinton has a slim lead in Ohio.

And in a new pre- and post-Paris Quinnipiac poll of Colorado (in which, it should be noted, Trump is in third place, but Carson leads), Clinton trails all polled Republicans by wide margins:

- Rubio over Clinton 52 - 36 percent;
- Carson leads Clinton 52 - 38 percent;
- Cruz tops Clinton 51 - 38 percent;
- Trump beats Clinton 48 - 37 percent.

I'm calling this now: If Rubio is the nominee, Clinton will lose. And if Trump or Carson is the nominee, she'll still have a fight on her hands, one she might not win.

POLITICO RETRANSMITS TRUMP'S INFLAMMATORY MISINFORMATION

It's a free country, so Donald Trump can say anything he wants, but that doesn't oblige Politico to retransmit his spew in a way that effectively endorses it:

Trump: Obama sending refugees to Republican states

The Obama administration is deliberately sending Syrian refugees to states led by Republican governors, Donald Trump alleged Tuesday.

Trump, who was speaking to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, said of the refugees, “They send them to the Republicans, not to the Democrats, you know because they know the problem ... why would we want to bother the Democrats?”

... Ingraham said that she had spoken with Florida's Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, who told her his state is already hosting dozens of Syrian refugees because “everybody wants to come to Florida” due to its low taxes and ample job opportunities.

“In California, you have a Democrat as a governor; in Florida you have Rick Scott so they send them to the Republicans,” Trump told Ingraham. “Taking these people is absolutely insanity.”

According to the Associated Press, governors from both parties have accepted refugees, although the number is nearly double for GOP states. More than 1,000 Syrian refugees have been accepted into states with Republican governors since January 1, while just over 500 have moved to Democratic-led states. (The number of Republican governors outweighs Democrats, 31 to 18, however.)

Gee, thanks for that tiny asterisk at the end, Politico. It mitigates your validation of this talking point somewhat -- but not enough.

Here's what Trump says: " “They send them to the Republicans, not to the Democrats." But which states are "the Republicans"? According to Trump -- and Politico --"the Republicans" include the deep-blue state of Massachusetts, which has an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate and legislature, just because it now has a Republican governor.

It's true, according to AP's numbers, that states with Republican governors have taken the majority of the Syrian refugees. But that includes several states that voted for Obama twice, and are considered reliably blue in presidential elections. If Obama is trying to punish Republican states with refugees, why are the refugees ending up in states that backed Obama?

Here are the numbers:

* Syrian refugees in red states (GOP governor, twice rejected Obama): 629
(Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah)

* Syrian refugees in blue states (Democratic governor, twice voted for Obama): 508
(California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington)

* Syrian refugees in presidential blue/gubernatorial red states (GOP governor but twice voted Obama): 646
(Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin)

* Syrian refugees in presidential purple/gubernatorial red states (GOP governor but voted Obama in 2008): 41
(Indiana, North Carolina)

So, yes, there are 1316 Syrian refugees in states with Republican governors and 508 in states with Democratic governors.

But there are 1154 Syrian refugees in states that voted Obama twice (plus 41 in states that voted for him once), and only 629 in states that never voted for him.

So what's red? What's blue? Well, Politico? Could you have made an effort to provide context?

KURT SCHLICHTER FIGHTS THE REAL ENEMY (HINT: IT'S NOT ISIS)

Over at IJReview, Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter has published a fantasy story I was about to refer to as "war porn" until I realized that its real subject, for all its military detail, isn't war at all. The subject is revenge against Schlichter's real enemy -- not ISIS, but liberals.

Pay no attention to the title, "What Defeating ISIS Would Look Like." ISIS's defeat, in this fever dream, is just a means to an end.

In Schlichter's fantasy, the Obama years have ended and we have a new president -- "young and usually quite calm, but as a Cuban-American son of immigrants, he understood tyranny and knew how to deal with it." (Really? Marco Rubio? Surely Schlichter is more of a Ted Cruz fan, but Cruz's mother was born in Delaware.) The president is first seen firing his weak-kneed CENTCOM commander, who lacks the will to "utterly destroy ISIS." President Cruzbio then summons a retired Marine known as "the Wildman":

He turned to his chief of staff. “Get the Wildman on the line.” ...

On a Florida golf course, the secure cell phone of the retired Marine everyone called “The Wildman” rang, ruining his putt. The Wildman was a legend for his aggression, hence his nickname. President Obama had naturally felt it necessary to replace him with a more pliable, passive CENTCOM commander.

"President Obama had naturally felt it necessary to replace him with a more pliable, passive CENTCOM commander." Did I say the real villain of this piece was Schlichter's domestic enemies? Hang on, there's more.

... “General, this is the President. We need you. I am ordering you off the retired list and back to active duty as CENTCOM commander, effective immediately. I want to see your plan for the total destruction of ISIS in 72 hours. Your rules of engagement are simple. Wipe them out.”

What we're going to get is war as wingers fantasize it could always be -- easy, painless, and instant -- if it weren't for liberals and quislings with their silly "rules of engagement" and "civilized" "values." Raqqa is bombed to smithereens -- and you know what the best thing about that is?

With Raqqa flattened, the President went on television to announce that America was again at war. Most Americans supported him.

Take that, libtards!

Next, a bit of backstory:

... he had been elected in the wake of the events of October 12, 2016, when ISIS sleepers in America had struck at shopping malls across the country. While the killers in Phoenix and Dallas had been unable to murder more than a half dozen because of armed citizens (police credited dead terrorists to a retired schoolteacher with a Glock 19 and an insurance salesman carrying a Kimber M1911A1), hundreds of defenseless Americans were massacred in gun-free shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago.

This is ostensibly a story about dealing with foreign foes, but Schlichter can't resist this NRA revenge fantasy -- bite me, gun-grabbers! And now back to the war:

“Our goal is simple. We are going to destroy ISIS and kill its members. There will be no negotiations, no hesitation, no hands tied behind our backs. They wanted war. They will have it,” said the President.

Yup, "no hands tied behind our backs." No matter which war wingnuts seem to be talking about, they're always talking about Vietnam.

The new GOP Senate majority leader dispensed with the filibuster, and the declaration of war passed easily.

Right -- remember how Democrats filibustered the Iraq War?

Oh, and here's my favorite part of all this:

The President also announced that all Americans must pay their fair share to support the war effort, and imposed a temporary 7% payroll tax on working Americans. Those not working must also pay their fair share too, he said; he signed a bill cutting all social programs 7% and shifting the savings to the military.

So all social programs are cut 7%? Does that include Medicare and Social Security? I bet that goes over really well in the heartland. Oh, and I bet Schlichter's "temporary 7% payroll tax on working Americans" doesn't apply to capital gains or carried interest.

How does the real enemy respond to this?

The Democrats went ballistic; the President’s approval rating hit 60%.

Preparations are made, and scores are settled:

At an airfield outside Irbil, the brave Kurds beheld a nearly endless series of C-17 cargo planes flying in with the weapons and ammunition Obama refused to supply.

Again we see Schlichter's real enemy. Oh, and by the way:

Kurt skipped the step where Congress passed a law making it legal to arm Kurds directly. Or maybe he didn't. pic.twitter.com/pH8WbWxoEN

— Gary Legum (@GaryLegum) November 17, 2015

"The Wildman" pointedly rejects liberal pusillanimity:

The Wildman’s Commander’s Intent statement said nothing about winning hearts and minds: “You will attack aggressively in order to destroy all ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria. You will kill all ISIS fighters who do not surrender. Your priority is the destruction of ISIS forces. The safety of civilians is secondary.”

Oooh, complete lack of concern for the fate of civilians! I think the earth just moved.

I won't bore you with too much of the rest, but, of course, the real enemy is soundly defeated:

The Americans published daily body counts. This horrified liberals, but delighted the American people... when American forces caught a band of ISIS fighters who had beheaded two captured American pilots, they were tried by a Marine court martial... and were shot by firing squad the next morning. The media was horrified when the President told a press conference, “If you murder Americans, you will die. Period.” His popularity rose to 70%.

... The Wildman ... set out to ruthlessly dismember the Islamic State, to kill its members, and to demonstrate to a Middle East that doubted American power and resolve under the feckless Barack Obama that America was still the proverbial strong horse.

... When the war ended after two months, the President’s popularity was 80% and the final body count was 26,763 ISIS fighters dead. The Islamic State was just a terrible memory.

That last sentence clearly puts the outcomes in order of importance.

And that's a big part of why we are where we are in America right now: Conservatives see everything, including the grave threat to America's safety and security posed by foreign jihadists, as part of the real war, the War on Liberalism. Triumphing in that war is what's most important; satisfying Muslim body counts come second; and actually neutralizing the specific group that threatens us comes third.

*****

BONUS SCHLICHTER: Here's a tweet the author of this piece posted the night of the Paris attacks:

Loaded 5 magazines as I watched the news reports. When they come here - and they will come here - we are the front line fighters. #2A

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) November 14, 2015

Schlichter lives in Manhattan Beach, California, population 35,726. I live in the real Manhattan. Hey Kurt, put the gun down. If they come, they're not coming for you.

KILL 'EM ALL ... BUT DON'T DO ANYTHING WARLIKE

American want to kick some ISIS ass -- but they apparently don't want any actual boots involved in the kicking:

A clear majority of Americans support escalating their country's fight against ISIS - but simultaneously oppose the notion of sending ground troops to the Middle East to take on the jihadists....

60% of Americans supported investing more in the military campaign against ISIS, with a slim majority favoring increased airstrikes. However, a clear majority opposed sending special forces or other ground troops to Iraq and Syria.

It's been known for a while that Americans oppose another ground war -- but only "a slim majority" wants an increase in airstrikes? Even though 60% want more invested in a military response? What the hell would such a response consist of, for Americans who don't want ground troops and are squeamish about airstrikes?

Maybe more special forces, in lieu of regular ground troops? Um, no:

Asked whether the United States should dispatch special forces - something President Obama has already done, albeit on a very small scale - opposition stood at 65%. But that number increased further when asked whether the US should deploy regular ground troops, with a full 76% opposed.

So to sum up: When it comes to ISIS, Americans don't want ground troops, don't want special forces, and are skittish about increasing the number of airstrikes -- but they're solidly in favor of a more aggressive military response.

Right. Got it.

I guess that would explain why, when Reuters/Ipsos asks Americans which party has the better plan for fighting terrorism, Republicans beat Democrats, 30%-18%. ("Don't know" beats both Republicans and Democrats, with 33%.) Republicans prevail over Democrats because the Republicans' plan for dealing with ISIS is to say "Obama sucks" and leave it at that. This level of specificity seems to be just fine with a plurality of Americans.

WE'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE: ON REFUGEES, THE PRESIDENT IS GOING TO LOSE

When a refusenik groundswell builds this fast, it's only going to grow larger if the president tries to stand firm:

More than a dozen Republican governors are moving to block Syrian refugees from entering their states after Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed at least 130 people and wounded hundreds more.

What started as a trickle of opposition turned into a deluge by late Monday as GOP governors from Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Arkansas -- and Democratic Govs. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Steve Bullock of Montana -- joined Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in refusing to accept refugees from Syria.

Yes, there are a lot of red states on that list. But there are also a lot of states that are generally counted as unswervingly Democratic in presidential elections (Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin), plus a couple that are regarded as tossups but were won by Barack Obama twice (Florida, New Hampshire). I know the president won't be on the ballot in 2016, but his first secretary of state probably will be.

Oh, and you have Republicans in Congress threatening to block funding for the refugee program, you have Rand Paul introducing a bill to halt the issuance of visas for refugees from Syria and up to thirty other countries, you have Chris Christie arguing for the rejection even of Syrian refugees who are "three-year-old orphans," you have Jeb Bush saying any refugee program should focus on Christians, and you have Mike Huckabee keeping it classy, in a conversation with Bret Baier of Fox News:

I think when you see the left-wing, socialist president of France -- a very politically correct country -- saying, 'It's time to close our borders,' and he does so immediately, I think it might be a clue to America that this idea of wholesale having people from the Middle East come and we have no idea who they are, when in fact one of the Paris attackers was one of those refugees, then, Bret, it's time to wake up and smell the falafel.

But wait -- we're assured by Ian Millhiser of Think Progress that the governors, at least, can't refuse Syrian refugees:

The problem for [the] governors opposed to admitting refugees, however, is that there is no lawful means that permits a state government to dictate immigration policy to the president in this way. As the Supreme Court explained in Hines v. Davidowitz, “the supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution.” States do not get to overrule the federal government on matters such as this one.

Just in case there is any doubt, President Obama has explicit statutory authorization to accept foreign refugees into the United States. Under the Refugee Act of 1980, the president may admit refugees who face “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” into the United States, and the president’s power to do so is particularly robust if they determine that an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” such as the Syrian refugee crisis exists.

This power to admit refugees fits within the scheme “broad discretion exercised by immigration officials” that the Supreme Court recognized in its most recent major immigration case, Arizona v. United States.

Yes, but we were also assured by Millhiser a year ago that the president's executive order allowing millions of undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. was also 100% legal, as determined by ... Arizona v. United States. Shortly afterward, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking the executive order, and just last week the injunction was upheld by the 5th Circuit. There are always judges on the federal bench who'll rule against this president, no matter what liberal legal observers think.

And if this can't be legally blocked by governors, the courts, or a Republican Congress, I'm predicting raw George Wallace-style resistance by the governments of the Southern states especially -- or, perhaps, confrontations involving angry True Patriots with AR-15s. As I've said before, I lived through busing in Boston. I know how ugly this sort of thing can get if at least some of the people holding government power reject the rule of law.

We've been through this sort of thing before in the Obama years. The president wanted to close Guantanamo, send some of the detainees to stateside penal facilities, and conduct trials in New York City. The backlash was fierce, and no one had his back -- and please recall that this was in 2009 and early 2010, when his party had large majorities in Congress. (The mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, who'd endorsed Obama in 2008, ultimately stabbed him in the back on this.)

When Obama's opponents have an ideal opportunity to prey on voters' fears, they'll do it, relentlessly. So this is going to be a losing battle for the White House.

*****

And let me also point out that a law invoked by Ian Millhiser, the Refugee Act of 1980, has some provisions that Republicans are sure to take advantage of :



It appears to me that the invocation of this law triggers an automatic public congressional hearing. Are you ready for that? How demagogic will that be?

CALL CONSERVATIVES ON THEIR DECEIT? WHAT, AND SPOIL A JUICY CONFLICT NARRATIVE?

In the wake of the Paris attacks, as Steve Benen notes, the right-wing reaction to the French bombing of ISIS targets in Syria has been (naturally) to attack President Obama:

... Erick Erickson, a prominent voice in Republican media, responded with a message that was fairly common on the American right.

“Dear President Obama, today France is leading from the front to contain what you couldn’t contain leading from behind.”

... National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar insisted this morning ... that the president has a “deep seated aversion to using military force,” adding, “If not after Paris, when?”

What’s puzzling about this is the degree to which the criticisms ignore current events. According to statistics from the Pentagon, since President Obama launched a military offensive against ISIS targets 15 months ago -- his “deep seated aversion to using military force” notwithstanding -- the United States military has carried out 6,353 airstrikes. Every other country on the planet combined has carried out 1,772.

... If we narrow the focus to Syria specifically, as of late last week, France had carried out four airstrikes. The United States, acting on orders from President Obama, had carried out 2,658.

The American right isn’t questioning the efficacy of American airstrikes; conservatives are questioning the American airstrikes’ existence.

But it isn't just the American right pretending that the president is singing "Kumbaya" and playing golf while ISIS runs rampant. It's also the mainstream media, which doesn't want to fact-check this characterization of what Obama is doing because the liberal-conservative conflict narrative is such a great news peg.

And so today we had CNN's Jim Acosta asking the president a press-conference question that concluded this way:

... I think a lot of Americans have this frustration that they see that the United States has the greatest military in the world, it has the backing of nearly every other country in the world when it comes to taking on ISIS. I guess the question is -- and if you’ll forgive the language -- is why can’t we take out these bastards?”

The obvious answer is: Because real life is not a freaking Michael Bay movie, you idiot. Armed conflicts don't get wrapped up in a two-hour running time.

I want someone to poll Americans on this question. Ask them: How many air strikes do you think the U.S. has conducted against ISIS in the past fifteen months? I bet at least a third of respondents would say "none." I bet the median answer would be in the low double digits.

And how would they know otherwise? Does the typical mainstream media outlet inform them?

TALKING ABOUT ISIS, STEVE SCHMIDT ALMOST GRASPS WHY TRUMP AND CARSON ARE WINNING

One GOP strategist is asked by Politico about the effects of the Paris attacks on the presidential race. Whether he realizes it or not, he's partway to an explanation of why Donald Trump and Ben Carson have been leading the race for months:

Steve Schmidt, a veteran GOP strategist and senior adviser to John McCain's 2008 campaign, predicted the current dynamic [in the race] would remain unchanged so long as no one in the race -- experienced or unexperienced -- was leveling with the American people about the true costs to quell the threats abroad.

"Simply asserting 'I will destroy ISIS' absent any honesty with the American people of what is required to do that is platitudes," Schmidt said. For voters, he said, "There's no difference between an experienced politician offering platitudes and an inexperienced outsider offering platitudes."

That's closer to the truth than most Republicans get. On foreign policy and terrorism, nearly every Republican -- Establishment or outsider -- talks in Fox-ready (and in many cases Fox-crafted) simplistic soundbites. America must lead! Obama believes in "leading from behind"! Obama called ISIS the "JV team"! The president and the rest of the "Democrat" Party won't say "radical Islam" or "Islamic terrorism" or "Islamic extremism"!

But that's not just the way Republicans talk about terrorism. It's how they talk about everything. And that's been true for many years: Obama wants to take all your guns! Obama hates capitalism! Obama is deliberately trying to create a dependency culture in which everyone is hooked on "free stuff"! Black Lives Matter wants to kill cops! Climate change scientists are bought-and-paid-for hoaxsters with a sinister big-government agenda! America is being destroyed by political correctness!

And that's the real reason Trump and Carson are leading the Republican race. If, for years, the vast majority of your party's utterances have been finger-pointing bumper-sticker slogans, then of course your voters are going to be ready to embrace a wealthy rabble-rouser or a beloved holy fool who's incapable of anything beyond simple-minded that sort of demagoguery. Of course your voters aren't going to demand detailed, well-thought-out proposals based on expertise and experience. You've raise your electorate on a diet of nothing but red meat -- you can't expect them at election time to suddenly develop a taste for vegetables. Especially when even the members of your party who know how to prepare vegetables have long since stopped serving up anything but the meat.

But then Schmidt adds:

“The American people have been communicated to like children -- by both parties -- and with extreme dishonestly by the administration,” Schmidt said.

So even he can't help himself. Yeah, the voters are being infantilized, but you know what else? Obama sucks!

This is your problem, Republicans. And you're getting the leaders you deserve.

A CLUELESS REPORTER INTERVIEWS A SERIES OF CLUELESS "EXPERTS"

In The New York Times, Jonathan Martin tries to anticipate what's going to happen in the presidential race as a result of the Paris attacks. He and his interviewees basically get everything wrong:

... The assault on Paris has thrust national security to the heart of the presidential race, forcing candidates to scramble and possibly prompting voters to reconsider their flirtations with unconventional candidates and to take a more sober measure of who is prepared to serve as commander in chief.

I jumped to the story's second paragraph, but the second paragraph already has the story's first mistake. Republican voters aren't going "to reconsider their flirtations with unconventional candidates and to take a more sober measure of who is prepared to serve as commander in chief." What just happened in Paris wasn't a shock to GOP voters -- they already despised brown-skinned foreigners and have been waiting for more stateside terrorism throughout President Obama's term. They've long believed that Europe is turning into "Eurabia"; they don't believe there should be any more Muslim immigration whatsoever to any Western country, and many of them believe the wacky theory that illegal immigration from Mexico is a conduit for Islamist terrorism. And they've made Donald Trump and Ben Carson their top two choices. Why would Paris change anything?

(This isn't an issue for Democrats because their top two contenders have plenty of government experience -- yes, even the supposedly "unconventional" Bernie Sanders.)

Until now, the campaign, when it did not descend into insult comedy on Twitter or become mired in biographical disputes, was focused on a subtler sort of threat to the country’s way of life: economic and racial inequality, for Democrats, and a less-defined fury about a loss of America’s identity, for Republicans.

Yes, and for Republican voters, what defines the "loss of America's identity" is the presence in America of people who aren't native born and/or white and/or Christian. So Paris wasn't a game changer for the GOP. It just reflected, for GOP voters, what they believe is happening to America already.

(In the Democratic race, many voters will find it reassuring that Hillary Clinton has foreign policy experience and is sometimes hawkish -- but those voters were probably already on her side. Still other voters will find it reassuring that Bernie Sanders is not a hawk -- but those voters were probably already on his side. Not much is going to change.)

... Republicans, whose primary is far more volatile, may now ask whether candidates like Mr. Carson, who claimed at one point that China was becoming involved in Syria, and Donald J. Trump, who suggested the battle against the Islamic State could be left to Russia, are wise choices in a world where Western capitals can be made into killing fields.

I seriously doubt it. See above.

“Voters are very dubious about our ability to remake the world, but they’re very serious about us defending ourselves,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. “They have a very low tolerance for being frightened.”

Actually, the American public has a very high tolerance for being frightened. See the entire George W. Bush presidency; see also previous Republican presidents' ability to persuade us that an existential threat to America was posed by Manuel Noriega, Nicaragua's Sandinistas, and the government of Grenada.

... What is almost certain is that the demands on the candidates will grow more exacting.

Nope. Donald Trump will not get specific. Neither will Ben Carson. It won't matter.

... while Mr. Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, has struggled with policy before, his inability to answer a straightforward question three times on “Fox News Sunday” about whom he would first call to put together a military alliance to confront the Islamic State appeared more consequential than it might have before Paris.

We've been telling ourselves for months that bizarre utterances by the two clowns at the top of the Republican polls are sure to be "consequential," by which we mean that Republican voters will finally realize that the two of them are unqualified loose cannons who narcissistically tell themselves that they're capable of serving as president when it's obviously not true. In fact, nothing of this sort penetrates. If anything, the wilder and more unhinged the campaign utterance by either of the two clowns, the bigger the poll bump.

... As the shock of the Friday attacks wore off, many of the hard-liners in the Republican field were moving to focus on blocking Syrian refugees from coming to America. “To bring them here under these circumstances is a suspension of intellect,” Mr. Carson declared Sunday.

The day before, at a rally in Beaumont, Tex., Mr. Trump was just as blunt, claiming without any evidence that President Obama wanted to take in 250,000 Syrian refugees. “You’d have to be insane,” he said.

Perfect. That's all you have to say as far as Republican voters are concerned -- Muslims suck! Wall them out! Vote for me!

... “I think that when you look at the dimensions of this tragedy, most Republican voters will not be satisfied with ‘We’ll bomb the S out of them,’” said Senator John McCain of Arizona, referring to Mr. Trump’s more pungent vow last week.

I think that's exactly what Republicans have wanted to hear from a president or presidential candidate for years, in precisely those words.

Mr. Ridge said: “Bombast doesn’t cut it. Inexperience doesn’t cut it. Those who have a record of governance and demonstrated leadership capabilities -- their stock is going to rise.”

Yeah, that's what the "Trump's poll rise is just like Herman Cain's" crowd has been saying since July. We're still waiting.

... “It does give an advantage to serious candidates,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Because this is an opportunity for them to emphasize their experience and give the kinds of speeches and explanations of this threat that will prompt people to say, ‘Hey, they know what they’re talking about.’”

This year, Republican voters hate experience. To Republican voters, if you've been in the arena, clearly you've failed, because liberalism and Islam still haven't been nuked off the face of the earth.

... “If in fact it becomes more clear that a critical aspect was a refugee problem, and the issue blends, that could play into somebody like Trump’s hands,” said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster. “Because then it gets to a larger narrative that the West has to shut down its borders -- and then you’re playing with fire.”

Okay, that's the only more or less accurate quote in the article. The only thing wrong with what Maslin says is that that narrative is already in place -- it's what Republican voters believe now, and they believed it even before Paris. Playing with fire? They have no problem with that. They've been doing that for months. And there's no reason to believe they'll stop.