Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines

Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines

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Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines
Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines
How the Right ruined immigration

How the Right ruined immigration

The cynical manufacturing of "chaos" by the GOP in refusing to reform immigration

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Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett
Feb 12, 2024
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Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines
Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Global Throughlines
How the Right ruined immigration
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NYT: Things Fall Apart: How the Middle Ground on Immigration Collapsed
WAPO: Trump brags about efforts to stymie border talks: ‘Please blame it on me’

Brilliant video (screen captures here) by NYT in exploring how, like abortion I would note, we went from consensus to deep polarization.

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We are all familiar, the video says, with the divergence on the right of that chart, but what happened to the consensus evident prior to the Boomers taking over in the early 1990s?

The stroke of genius here: showing George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan debating immigration in the 1980 GOP primaries. They are actually competing to see who is more empathetic on the subject.

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The great Reagan quote:

Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems?

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