Republicans' anti-refugee rhetoric is shameful and despicable — and probably good politics

It took about a day and a half for Republican politicians to move from "What happened in Paris was awful!" through "Barack Obama is weak on evildoers!" to "Terrorist foreigners are coming to kill your children!"

As I write this, 26 Republican governors (and one Democrat) have said publicly that they oppose bringing Syrian refugees to their states, with most saying they'd refuse to accept them; by the time you read this, the other five Republican governors may have made similar statements. Meanwhile, every major GOP presidential candidate has come out against bringing Syrian refugees here, and Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to bar any Syrian refugees from settling in the United States.

This hurricane of xenophobia and cynical opportunism makes for a truly odious display. But sadly, it's also good politics for Republicans, at least in the short term.

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Before we go any farther, we should acknowledge a simple fact: If you're concerned about stopping ISIS from committing an act of terrorism in the United States, the 10,000 Syrian refugees who will be admitted after a rigorous vetting process is one of the last things you should be worried about. It's possible (though far from necessary) for a member of ISIS to get to Europe by posing as a refugee, since large numbers of Syrians are somewhat chaotically making their way to places like Greece, and once they're on European soil they can move freely between countries. But the process of getting to the United States as a refugee is completely different.

You can't just get in a rubber boat on the Mediterranean coast, wash up in Manhattan, and be allowed to stay. Someone who wanted to come to the U.S. to commit a terrorist act could do so with a student visa or a tourist visa; there'd be no point in going through the lengthy, multi-layered vetting process to gain refugee status, which involves both the United Nations and the U.S. government, and requires up to a two-year wait. That isn't to say we shouldn't thoroughly check those refugees seeking to come here. But that's exactly what we're already doing, and will continue to do.

I assume (perhaps naively) that most of the politicians rushing to stoke fears of refugees have some understanding of those basic facts. But they've seen their political opportunity and they're seizing it, with some truly ugly ideas and rhetoric about supposedly dangerous foreigners who need to be kept out to keep us safe.

It's certainly going to help them in the Republican primaries, and maybe beyond. As a new poll — taken before the Paris attacks — from the Public Religion Research Institute shows, Americans as a whole are suspicious of Islam and of immigrants, but that's particularly true for Republicans. White evangelical Protestants — the core of the GOP's base — are the group most hostile to Islam, with 73 percent saying the religion is at odds with American values. Potential Syrian refugees are Muslim (mostly) and immigrants, another group for whom opinions are not too high among Republicans. By a margin of 66-26, Republicans said immigrants burden the country, not strengthen it. (Democrats' views were almost exactly the opposite.)

So when Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush say we should only accept Christian refugees, or Donald Trump toys with the idea of shutting down mosques, you can bet that plenty of Republican voters nod their heads in agreement.

There's a strong incentive for the GOP presidential candidates to stake out these hostile positions on the refugee question. No one is going to suffer in the Republican primaries because they were too unwelcoming of refugees or too contemptuous toward Muslims, as we've already seen. Recall that that when Ben Carson said no Muslim should be allowed to be president, it didn't slow his rise to the top of the primary polls one bit.

There is one way this period of fear-mongering could come back to haunt the Republican Party. While for the moment their anti-immigrant sentiment has been directed away from Latinos and toward Muslims, don't think Latino voters (along with Asian-Americans and many other groups) aren't paying attention. Next fall, when the Republican nominee comes before those voters and says, "We want to be an inclusive, welcoming party where you can find a home," these minority won't have forgotten the vile anti-refugee rhetoric we're hearing today. And the GOP's task of winning more Latino votes than they have in the last couple of elections — without which they absolutely cannot take back the White House — will be that much harder.

But that's in the future. Right now, all the GOP candidates can see is that stoking base voters' fears and prejudices might yield a few more primary votes. It may be smart short-term politics. But it will be to their eternal shame.