Dem
51
GOP
49
Govs. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Ron DeSantis (F-FL) seem to be engaging in a proxy battle about who can ship more migrants north. Until this past weekend, Ron DeSantis had the upper hand with his planeload of migrants to Martha's Vineyard. Now Abbott has sent three busloads of migrants to D.C. and had them dropped off at One Naval Observatory (the vice president's official residence) on a below-freezing Christmas Eve. An act of Christian charity? We don't know. And unfortunately, the staff theologian forgot that it is unwise to drink eggnog and sacramental wine within a few hours of each other. After all, there may be the blood of Christ, but there ain't no nog of Christ. In any event, a local aid organization brought the migrants to a D.C. church.
Is this a sign that Abbott plans to challenge DeSantis for the Republican nomination in 2024 and feels he needs to out-macho DeSantis? We don't know. Dropping 100+ people out in the freezing cold on Christmas Eve, probably on false pretenses, sounds venal to us, but venal is the secret sauce that many Republican voters lap up with glee. Abbott has been complaining about the administration's failure to secure the border for years. This stunt was just designed to be more dramatic than DeSantis flying migrants from Texas to Massachusetts (with a very short stopover in Florida to make it seem legal). At least Abbott used buses instead of a plane, which saved Texas taxpayers some money, although he missed the opportunity to vastly overpay a Republican donor who owns a charter air company, as did DeSantis.
Maybe Abbott's move was an attempt to bring attention to the potential expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era policy of sending all migrants back to Mexico regardless of their claims of asylum. The Supreme Court put the expiration on hold temporarily, so maybe this is some kind of coded message to the Court to make the hold permanent.
While this may help Abbott pick off some Republicans who currently support DeSantis, one poll shows that only one-third of Americans support this kind of publicity stunt. Maybe Abbott is thinking that first he has to get the nomination, so his general-election strategy will have to wait until that happens. (V)