Bob Worsley’s new book “The Horseshoe Virus” speaks on immigration and the Republican Party
Dec. 9, 2020
Former State Senator Bob Worsley has written a new book.
It’s titled “The Horseshoe Virus: How the Anti-Immigration Movement Spread from Left-Wing to Right-Wing America” and it looks at the history of anti-immigration movements and how the virus has most recently has “infected” the GOP.
Horizonte host José Cárdenas talked with him more about it.
“I don’t think that very many people thought that Joe Arpaio and Russell Pearce actually were getting their policy chops, from the left, and the very people that were promoting Planned Parenthood, and came from the old world of eugenics, those people were very much the intellectual horsepower and Russell Pearson and Joe Arpaio were the brawn,” said Worsley.
It wasn’t until President Trump’s campaign and time in office that, “‘Build the wall’, ‘lock him up’, I mean, this whole thing became the Republican platform,” said Worsley
“And, unfortunately, people like Jeff Flake, John McCain, Mitt Romney, a lot of us found ourselves outside the mainstream of the party and became marginalized as ‘never Trumpers’, because we would not embrace that draconian attitude toward immigrants,” said Worsley.
Worsley said that the Trump campaign Steve Bannon helped with was built on hatred and, “hatred got people to the polls that…it’s too hard to get hope. So they doubled down on hatred in order to work up the base to get them to the polls and it was successful.”
He adds, “It’s an awful way to run things it’s a terrible way to run a political campaign.”
The way the campaign ran and the immigration policies that followed caused Worsley to disaffiliate with the party for the time being, “I’m still in the party hoping that there’s a place for me. But today, until Trump is gone, and we let this all settle out of our system, the Republican Party is not my party.”
Trump received the second most votes in history and Worsley said it reveals a lot about the country.
“It certainly exposes how much prejudice still exists by aggrieved white people in this country who are afraid to become the minority. And I think there’s a great fear, by many people, especially those with less education, that they are going to lose their voice, and that this America was a white America,” said Worsley.
The “white” America feels there is no room for other cultures and races and, “I think American needs to get comfortable being a more diverse country,” said Worsley.