With his policy of systematically separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, Donald Trump finally extended his racially infused economic nationalism to a point that a critical mass of elected Republicans could not follow. …
With several polls this week showing that roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose Trump’s family separation policy and images of distraught children dominating television, many congressional Republicans were openly seeking a way out. But, by any reasonable standard, Capitol Hill Republicans marched themselves into this quagmire by either actively endorsing, or failing to effectively resist, almost every earlier step Trump has taken to redefine the party around his insular nationalism. …
The irony is that many elected Republicans moved away from Trump on family separation even as the same polls showing majority opposition overall consistently discovered that nearly three-fifths of self-identified Republican partisans support the policy (at least when it’s identified as a Trump initiative). That captures a larger truth: As the GOP has grown more dependent on older and non-college-educated whites, Trump’s rejection of the party’s internationalist traditions actually reflects the emerging majority opinion in its coalition. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic