Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
Conflicting advice from Trump’s remade inner circle of advisers—including former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, newly installed campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and campaign CEO Steve Bannon—and the outside counsel of conservative mega-donor Sheldon Adelson have led to a series of muddled statements that have left Trump sounding at times like President Obama and his former GOP rivals on immigration, not a hardliner ready to deport illegal immigrants.
But over the last week, this coterie of aides, together with speechwriter Stephen Miller, has convinced Trump that some moderation in his rhetoric is undeniably necessary if he aims to compete in swing states on Election Day.
Conway, who joined the campaign less than three weeks ago, is an experienced pollster who has spent a lot of time message-testing conservative arguments on immigration. Working for Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, now one of Trump’s main allies on Capitol Hill, she presented a template for Republicans in 2014 that called for presenting the issue in economic terms and arguing that immigration is depressing wages for American workers.
In June 2014, she was among several Republican pollsters who offered new research concluding that while a majority of Americans oppose so-called “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, a majority also “don’t believe ‘deportation’ is a viable policy.
“In fact, there is an overwhelming consensus in support of some kind of legalization for undocumented immigrants,” the report concluded.
In interviews about the speech, Conway has vowed that Trump’s policy will be “fair” and “humane.”
In an interview with Wednesday, Conway insisted Trump is still firmly opposed to amnesty for undocumented immigrants, but hedged slightly, seemingly excusing her candidate’s apparent waffling.
In his remarks Wednesday night, Trump will stick to his “no amnesty” language but stop well short of calling for mass deportations and refusing to consider some extended pathway to legal status for those undocumented immigrants who pay a fine and back taxes.
He is expected to emphatically restate his commitment to building a physical wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, aides said Tuesday, beating back suggestions from surrogates that Trump has been speaking metaphorically and planned only to build a “virtual wall.”
He plans to enumerate his other policy ideas aimed at curbing illegal immigration, from punishing “sanctuary cities” to increasing the number of federal ICE and making E-Verify mandatory.
Rush Limbaugh made it plain that, in his view, Trump’s 14-month-long appeal to the immigration zealots among conservative primary voters was little more than a con job.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-chilled-by-cold-election-day-reality-227572