Some Republicans feel uneasy about DeSantis migrant strategy
by Alexander Bolton - 09/24/22 12:01 PM ET
Some Republican senators are privately expressing misgivings over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) provocative decision to ship migrants from Texas to liberal enclaves such as Martha’s Vineyard.
GOP lawmakers acknowledge sending planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Obama recently bought a house, plays well on Fox News and will likely ingratiate the Florida governor with Republican primary voters if he runs for president in 2024.
But the idea of shipping migrants thousands of miles across the country to Martha’s Vineyard — an island off of Massachusetts with only 17,000 year-round resident and hardly enough housing even for seasonal summer workers — without any advance notice to local authorities, to make a political point, leaves some GOP lawmakers feeling uncomfortable.
One Senate Republican critic who requested anonymity to comment candidly on DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard gambit said it shows how much politics has changed since then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) made his brand “compassionate conservativism” before the 2000 election.
“It plays well to the base, but I just think of the humanity of it,” said the GOP senator. “It fires up a certain set of voters, but it turns another set of voters off.”
“The immediate media focus is on the shipping of people,” added the senator, referring to the critical media coverage of DeSantis and other Republican governors such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who have sent migrants to Chicago and Washington, D.C.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll published Friday showed that only a third of Americans think it’s appropriate for Republican governors to fly or bus migrants to other states. Half of the Republicans polled and only 1 in 6 Democrats said it was OK.
Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats say they opposed the practice, according to the survey of 1,005 adults.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a leading voice in Congress on immigration issues, said DeSantis’s aggressive tack would wind up turning off middle-of-the-road voters.
He said laws may have been broken and that he would monitor how Republican governors are treating the migrants.
“More information is coming out. In fact, a lawsuit has been filed against him for alleged misrepresentations to these people. I’m just going to stay tuned and let the facts develop before making any legal conclusion,” he said.
“This is exploitation at its worse,” he added. “The MAGA Republicans will glory in this kind of outrageous conduct but normal, sensible, independent [people] I’m sure will see through it.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), another leader on immigration issues, said there may be cause for Congress to investigate whether DeSantis improperly used federal COVID-19 relief money to fly migrants around the country.
A second Republican senator called DeSantis’s decision to ship migrants from Texas “a little strange” because they were outside his state’s jurisdiction.
The senator added that Abbott, the Texas governor, who is also seen as a potential presidential candidate, “has been more cautious,” because he’s only sent migrants from his own state and hasn’t sent them any of them to Martha’s Vineyard, a destination that seemed designed to provoke liberals.
The discomfort felt by some Senate Republicans was voiced publicly by former Trump White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law, who said it was “very troubling” to see DeSantis use 48 Venezuelan migrants as “political pawns.”
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https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3658943-some-republicans-feel-uneasy-about-desantis-migrant-strategy/
