What’s Really Causing the Minnesota ‘Insurrection’?
The immigration-related drama in Minnesota took a foreboding turn over the weekend when it was reported that the Pentagon had alerted two battalions of the 11th Airborne Division, based in Alaska, to be prepared for possible deployment. That move followed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s mobilization of the state’s National Guard — “on standby” — to deal with the escalating violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Walz certainly has not been innocent in the outbreak of anti-ICE violence, having denounced the federal agents as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.” That remark was made last May, months before Donald Trump’s recent “surge” of ICE to Minnesota, which followed in the wake of a viral video by independent journalist Nick Shirley that exposed apparent fraud in the state’s Somali immigrant community. Many commentators immediately saw the connection: Walz and his fellow Democrats in Minnesota are up to their eyeballs in the fraud scandal — estimated to involve billions of dollars stolen from taxpayer-funded benefit programs — and the deportation of illegal immigrants threatens to break the Democratic Party’s control of the state’s government. (RELATED: Blame Tim Walz for the Federal Presence in Minnesota)
The implications of the current situation in Minnesota, however, go far beyond the Gopher State. As Ben Weingarten has pointed out in the Federalist, the fraud scandal exposes “a feature of what we might call The Blue Model of government”:
Fueled by the welfare state and increasingly open borders, it is at core about political patronage, profiteering, and plunder. Democrats’ survival depends upon a political-business model of vote-buying via legal and illicit wealth redistribution.
It’s not only Minnesota where this system of corrupt patronage is the basis of Democratic Party power. When we examine political implications for the near future — the 2030 Census is now just four years away — it becomes apparent why Democrats nationwide are panicking over Trump’s determination to crack down on fraud and enforce immigration law. Batya Ungar-Sargon has noted the extreme tone of the anti-ICE rhetoric. “The Democrats want you to believe the next civil rights struggle is here: ICE is the Gestapo and all good Americans must defend illegal immigrants from deportation,” Ungar-Sargon remarked Sunday. “Let’s be clear: When they call ICE the Gestapo, they’re calling Americans Nazis.”
What’s causing the crisis in Minnesota is the Democratic Party’s increasingly desperate effort to maintain its viability in the face of Trump’s populist challenge.
The Third Reich is not the only historical analogy being misappropriated in this rhetorical battle. After the shooting that killed anti-ICE protester Renee Good, Walz invoked the Civil War, comparing the riotous mob in Minneapolis to the First Minnesota Infantry Regiment helping to repel Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Meanwhile, the defiance of federal authority expressed by Walz led many conservatives to liken him to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (a comparison which I, as a Southerner, felt compelled to protest). (RELATED: Minnesota and the New Nullification Crisis)
Behind these misguided invocations of history, however, there is at least a small nugget of truth — what’s causing the crisis in Minnesota is the Democratic Party’s increasingly desperate effort to maintain its viability in the face of Trump’s populist challenge. A year ago, David Catron explained that the reapportionment of House seats (and the related impact on the Electoral College) after the 2030 Census could exile Democrats into permanent minority status:
The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, for example, estimates that California will lose four [House] seats and New York will lose two. Likewise, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin will probably lose one seat each.
Which states will gain House seats and Electoral College votes? Florida and Texas are likely to pick up four seats, while Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina and Utah will gain one each. It’s no coincidence that Democrat governors in blue states which stand to lose clout in Congress and the Electoral College oppose President Trump’s immigration policies, particularly deportation. Why? The Census Bureau counts people rather than citizens. That includes “unauthorized migrants.” …
Consequently, any state with a large population of illegal immigrants has a substantial political incentive to resist attempts by the Trump administration to deport them.
The potential swing of a net 12 Electoral College votes from Democrat-leaning states to GOP-friendly states, simply as a result of shifting population, could have a dramatic impact on national politics, with devastating consequences for the ability of Democrats to wield power nationally.
Here is where history can be a useful guide. Our current two-party system arose during those “four score and seven years” that Abraham Lincoln referenced in the Gettysburg Address. George Washington had been the unanimous choice as America’s first president, but the 1796 election was bitterly contested between John Adams, who had served as Washington’s vice president, and Thomas Jefferson, who had been Secretary of State. From this division arose the nation’s first two parties, the Federalists backing Adams and Jefferson’s faction calling itself Republicans (who were the predecessors of the modern Democratic Party). During the four years of Adams’s presidency, Jefferson was able to strengthen his party and claim the White House in the 1800 election. Subsequently, Jefferson’s party held the presidency for 24 years — two terms for Jefferson, then two terms each for James Madison and James Monroe — the so-called “Virginia Dynasty.”
Jefferson and his successors destroyed the Federalist Party and, in the process, diminished the influence of New England in national politics.
Virginia monopolizing the presidency for so long irritated New England sensibilities. The Yankees considered themselves to have led the way in the revolution that made America independent, and, even if there had been no policy disagreements involved, the injury to the pride of New Englanders was a wound that festered. This expressed itself most clearly in the Hartford Convention, a secret gathering of New England Federalists toward the end of the War of 1812. The delegates considered the possibility of New England seceding from the Union. But such ended in January 1815 when news came of the Treaty of Ghent, which concluded the war, and Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory at New Orleans. Afterwards, when the proceedings of the Hartford Convention became public, it permanently ruined the Federalist Party’s fortunes.
In the 1824 election, however, the Jeffersonian party fractured in such a way that, even though Jackson got more Electoral College votes for president, the race was decided by the House of Representatives, which narrowly chose John Quincy Adams. Yet his lone term in office was a failure, and Jackson won a decisive victory in 1828 and was reelected by a landslide in 1832. The ascendancy of Jackson’s Democratic Party was uncontested, in large part, because the addition of new states in the West had tipped the balance in the Electoral College against New England.
In 1792, there were 132 Electoral College votes; 38 of those votes (28.8 percent of the total) belonged to the New England states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Massachusetts alone wielded 16 electoral votes (12.1 percent of the total) in 1792. Forty years later, however, when Jackson was reelected to a second term in the White House in 1832, the Electoral College had increased to 288 voters, and the New England states (now including Maine) possessed just 50 — a mere 17.4 percent of the total. That total was exactly matched by six new states in the South and West — Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri — each of which permitted slavery. Kentucky and Tennessee, each with 15 Electoral College votes in 1832, now had more representation than Massachusetts, with just 14 votes.
Over the next three decades, controversies over slavery increased, especially concerning whether the practice would be permitted in new Western states added to the Union. The political alliance of the South and the West, which had secured Jackson’s triumph, was eventually divided by the rise of the Republican Party, which gained popularity for its promise of “free soil” (i.e., the exclusion of slave labor) in the new territories. While it is certainly fair to say that slavery caused the Civil War, it is wrong to ignore the roots of the crisis in the resentment of New Englanders over their declining political influence, which long predated the election of Lincoln.
Something similar seems to be afoot in the ongoing crises of the Trump Age, of which the current conflict in Minnesota is but the latest eruption. Like the New Englanders of the early 1800s, the liberal elites of the 21st century fear being frozen out of power. “The Blue Model of government,” as Ben Weingarten calls it, is fiscally unsustainable, especially because it inspires so many productive citizens to “vote with their feet” by moving to taxpayer-friendly states like Florida and Texas.
Consider this: In 1984, when Ronald Reagan won a 49-state landslide, Minnesota was the only state that went for Democrat Walter Mondale, a native son of Minnesota. That deprived Reagan of 10 Electoral College votes. Minnesota still has 10 Electoral College votes, but that’s likely to be reduced to nine after the 2030 Census. Meanwhile, the states of Texas and Florida, which had a total of 50 Electoral College votes between them in 1984, now have 70 Electoral College votes combined, and will have even more after 2030.
The Red states are booming; Blue states like Minnesota are fading, and the fight over deporting illegal immigrants is part of a frantic attempt by Democrats to hold onto power. Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against Tim Walz’s effort to obstruct ICE operations in Minnesota, and the suggestion of deploying Army paratroopers may be more than just a suggestion. Walz holds a losing hand, defending a failed political model, up to his neck in scandal, and dependent upon Somalis and other immigrants to boost his state’s census count enough to keep from losing influence in Congress and the Electoral College. (RELATED: No Census Reform, No Election Integrity)
Amid all these tensions, however, Trump has the decisive advantage of popular support. By a 24-point margin of 62 percent to 38 percent, voters favor mass deportation of illegals, a CBS News poll found last summer, and other national polls have consistently shown similar results. Negative media coverage and Democrats’ rhetoric about ICE raids may make a dent in Trump’s popularity, but his basic policy regarding immigration still represents the will of “We the People.” (RELATED: The Media Are Agents of Propaganda)
For all their talk about “defending democracy,” the Democrats are actually against the democratic process when it produces outcomes they don’t like. Ultimately, Walz’s insurrection in Minnesota is doomed to fail, and Trump’s victory will be another example of keeping his promise to “Make America Great Again.”
READ MORE from Robert Stacy McCain:
History Still Teaches Us to Hope
The Dangerous Delusion of ‘Equality’
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