How Star Wars explains our troubling presidential race: http://bit.ly/1TtOCoE
May the Fourth be with you (you’ll need it)!
Cato’s Governor’s Report Card grade on Governor John Kasich was cited on PBS Newshour.
In the 2014 Governor’s Report Card, Kasich received a D. Spending has risen rapidly during Kasich’s tenure in Columbus. Much of the increase is due to Kasich’s support of Medicaid expansion.
Last night Cato Institute research was cited multiple times during the Fox Business/Wall Street Journal GOP Debates. Missed the debate? Watch the clips below:
7 pm Debate
9 pm Debate
Commentary after the Debates
Cato scholars will be live tweeting Saturday’s Democratic Debate starting at 9 pm. Join the conversation with #Cato2016.
In last night’s Republican Presidential debate, Donald Trump argued that President Eisenhower’s immigration enforcement plan called Operation Wetback (Trump didn’t use that horrendous name) drastically reduced unlawful immigration in the early 1950s. He said:
“Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower. Good president. Great president. People liked him. I liked him. I Like Ike, right? The expression, ‘I like Ike.’ Moved 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country. Moved them just beyond the border, they came back. Moved them again beyond the border, they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved ‘em waaaay south, they never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer, you don’t get friendlier. They moved 1.5 million people out. We have no choice. We. Have. No. Choice.”
The evidence and statements by border patrol and INS officials in the 1950s and afterward disagree with Mr. Trump’s analysis. Increased immigration enforcement did not reduce unauthorized immigration in the 1950s, legal migration did.
Mr. Trump is correct that unauthorized immigration decreased markedly in the 1950s, but he is wrong to attribute all or even most of that to increased enforcement under the utterly inhumane Operation Wetback.
Despite what Mr. Trump says, the lesson from the 1950s is not that harsh and inhumane immigration enforcement is effective; it is that a legal migration pathway can halt unlawful immigration.
Learn more….
Check out #Cato2016 on Twitter for all our Campaign 2016 coverage.
Last night, 60 minutes aired an interview with Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump and Scott Pelley. Cato scholars have been following Trump’s campaign since the very beginning. Read their commentary below:
Cato scholars have live tweeted all of the recent Republican primary debates. Read their tweets about Trump and the public policy discussions here.
New Cato Daily Podcast: The Selfie Vote
Why are Republicans so bad at courting a generation that may well be very receptive to a free market, limited government message? While millennials’ political views are often overlooked, the electoral stakes for decades hang in the balance.
In this engaging new podcast, Kristen Soltis Anderson, author of The Selfie Vote, explains how millennials view politics and why the GOP is losing the culture war — fast!
It’s official…Governor Scott Walker is running for President.
Overall, his actions have helped restore fiscal sanity to Wisconsin. But voters concerned about Washington’s debt and profligacy should be aware of Walker’s record of increasing state spending even while cutting taxes.
The midterm elections are finally over, pending runoffs, and it looks as if it was a good night for Republicans. So what are the lessons that we can take away from this election? According to Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner, Republicans will be making a mistake if they interpret this election as an endorsement of the Republican agenda. “If Republicans want to build on last night’s success, particularly for 2016,” says Tanner, “they will have to come up with a positive agenda, and prove that they can govern without surrendering on basic principles. That’s a tough order.”
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