Fwd: Steve Bannon's clever idea to save the GOP from brutal midterms
[{"sender": "Sultan Bin Sulayem", "recipients": ["Jeffrey Epstein [jeevacation@gmail.com]"], "timestamp": "6/1/2018 10:54:16 PM", "subject": "Fwd: Steve Bannon's clever idea to save the GOP from brutal midterms", "body": "Sent from my iPhone"}, {"sender": "Fareed Zakaria GPS", "recipients": ["Fareed Zakaria GPS"], "timestamp": "June 2, 2018 at 2:26:50 AM GMT+4", "subject": "Steve Bannon's clever idea to save the GOP from brutal midterms", "body": "Please scroll down or click here to read my latest Washington Post column.\nSteve Bannon's clever idea to save the GOP from brutal midterms\nBy Fareed Zakaria, Friday, June 1, 2018\nROME -- The Republican Party faces dim prospects in the midterm elections. But it doesn't have to be that way, says\nStephen K. Bannon, the chief ideologist of the populist wave that brought Donald Trump into the White House. \"If the\nRepublicans continue on the path they are on,\" Bannon told me Thursday, \"they will lose 40 seats in the House and\nPresident Trump will be impeached.\" He presented an alternative that strikes me as clever, and it's a strategy that\nTrump himself seems to instinctively get.\nBannon was in Rome to learn from and provide support to the unusual coalition of populists and nationalists who\ntogether won half the vote in Italy's recent elections and are now set to govern. Bannon sees that sort of coalition —\nmixing left and right, old and young — as his goal for the United States. \"Europe is about a year ahead of the United\nStates.... You see populist-nationalist movements with reform [here].... You could begin to see the elements of\nBernie Sanders coupled with the Trump movement that really becomes a dominant political force in American politics.\"\n(This column draws on an on-air interview he did with me for CNN, as well as a subsequent conversation.)\nThe Republican Party's strategy, for now, appears to be to make the midterm elections a series of local contests focusing\non the tax cut and the healthy economy. Bannon views this as fundamentally misguided. \"You have to nationalize the\nelection,\" he said. Bannon understands that voters are moved from the gut more than through a wonky analysis of\ntaxes. \"This is going to be an emotional [election] — you're either with [House Minority leader] Nancy Pelosi or you're\nwith Donald Trump.... Trump's second presidential race will be on Nov. 6 of this year.\"\nBannon is most focused on the issue of immigration because it hits both the heart and the head. \"Immigration is about\nnot just sovereignty, it's about jobs.\" He believes that the Trump coalition can attract up to a third of Sanders supporters\nwho see trade and immigration as having created unfair competition for jobs, particularly for working-class blacks and\nHispanics. He advocates appealing directly to those voters, saying, \"You're not going to be able to take the Hispanic and\nblack community from the STEM system in grammar school to our best engineering schools ... to the great jobs in\nSilicon Valley, unless you start to limit these H-1B visas and this unfair competition ... from East Asia and South Asia.\"\nNow this strikes me as entirely wrong. The reason that not enough Hispanic and black students end up in Silicon Valley\nhas much more to do with a broken education system, particularly for poorer kids, than the modest number of skilled\nAsian immigrants who get work visas. The most likely result of limiting these visas is that talented immigrants will simply\ngo elsewhere — Canada, Britain, Australia — and start successful companies there. And, in fact, there is lots of evidence\nthis is already happening.\nBut Bannon is right that this is a brilliant electoral strategy. The idea of greater immigration controls has an undeniable\nmainstream appeal. The Democratic Party is too far to the left on many of these issues, embracing concepts such as\nsanctuary cities, which only reinforces its image as a party that is more concerned with race, identity and\nmulticulturalism than the rule of law.\nWhere Bannon is analytic and historical, Trump is instinctive. But the president appears to see the situation similarly. I\nwrote last month that Trump would try to fight the midterm elections on immigration and added, \"Do not be surprised if\nTrump also picks a few fights with black athletes.\" In recent weeks, the president has labeled immigrant gang members\n\"animals\" and suggested that football players who silently protest police violence against blacks should leave the\ncountry.\nBannon thinks Trump is just getting started in nationalizing the election around immigration. He predicted the next\nmajor battle would be over the proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. \"The wall is not just totemic. The wall is\nabsolutely central to his program.... As we come up on Sept. 30, if [Congress's] appropriations bill does not include\nspending to fully build his wall ... I believe he will shut down the government.\"\nSadly, but not surprisingly, Bannon doesn't think the fighting and the rancor in the United States are going away any\ntime soon. The \"battle between nationalists and globalists is at the fundamental roots of what America is, what America\nwill be,\" he said. \"This is very healthy, and ... I think this is going to go on for a long time.... We've got a lot more\nfighting and a lot more scar tissue to go over.\"\nYou can watch my CNN special \"The Steve Bannon Interview\" on Friday at 9 pm ET and Sunday at 10 am ET."}]