A DAY after Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering America, until the government can “figure out” the threat of terrorism, the property tycoon and presidential candidate was invited on television to say how his scheme might work. For instance, how might border guards spot Muslim travellers, given that most passports do not record a holder’s religion, an interviewer asked? Mr Trump was ready for that one. “They would say: ‘Are you Muslim?’” he explained.
There was no sniggering from Republican rivals. They have spent too many months watching Mr Trump lead in opinion polls of conservative voters, even as he tramples facts, insults opponents and makes fantastical promises that would get any other candidate hooted off the stage. His Muslim travel ban may be unworkable, probably illegal, shameful and a propaganda coup for Islamic State (IS). But this is the candidate who Republican supporters have named, repeatedly, as the most trustworthy on national security—though his only direct experience in that field was as a pupil at a military boarding school. Recent terror attacks have left Mr Trump almost giddy. “Every time things get worse, I do better,” he bragged to a crowd in Iowa, days after a mass-shooting in San Bernardino, California. “We’re going to be so vigilant,” he added. “We’re going to be so tough and so mean and so nasty.”



Mr Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim visitors did prove a step too far for many Republican rivals and grandees. Several called it an affront to the country’s founding values, even after Mr Trump said it would not apply to American citizens, Muslim soldiers in America’s armed forces, athletes and other worthies. Still, Republican leaders feel trapped. They know that as the months pass Mr Trump’s policies may offend enough moderate, young and non-white voters to lose them the general election. They also know they cannot win without lots of his supporters, notably the working-class whites who are his most loyal backers. They are terrified that he may run as an independent, splitting the right.
Now terrorism has fallen like a lightning strike onto a political landscape that was already primed to burn. Recent attacks have panicked those Americans who long ago lost confidence in the country’s ruling elites and institutions. Republican presidential candidates are united in calling President Barack Obama weak and passive in the face of danger: a view shared by a growing number of voters. They accuse him of appeasement when he declines to say that America is at war with “radical Islamic terrorism”—scorning his argument that using such language helps IS to portray their thuggery as a religious conflict with unbelievers.
Republicans are a bit less united when it comes to their plans for defanging IS. Presidential hopefuls disagree about how many special forces might help on the ground, and how much government surveillance Americans should tolerate. They argue over whether to confront such blood-soaked autocrats as Bashar al-Assad in Syria, or let him kill Islamists unobstructed. In the end, though, their differences are relatively minor. After 14 years of combat, there is no war party in Washington urging full-scale invasions to build new democracies. Americans want to feel safe and to see terrorists crushed. Few want to fix the Muslim world.
The really perilous Republican divide involves not foreign policy, but the social contract between government and the American people. For one group of candidates, public panic is a cue to chide Mr Obama for incompetence and misguided priorities. These Republicans include Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and the former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. They complain that Mr Obama called for gun control after the San Bernardino shootings—arguing that strict gun curbs only disarm the law-abiding. They grumbled when he attended a climate-change summit in Paris, calling global warming a less urgent threat than terrorism. Not every voter would agree. But this is the stuff of normal opposition politics.
Mr Trump and Mr Cruz cross a line
Alas, other candidates, most notably Mr Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, seem bent on something different. Rather than condemning Mr Obama as incompetent, both men hint that he and his government are malevolent. Pondering Mr Obama’s reluctance to talk about Islamic terrorism, Mr Trump waded into the fever-swamps of conspiracy, telling the Republican Jewish Coalition, a conservative group: “He refuses to say it. There’s something going on with him that we don’t know about.”
Mr Cruz calls Mr Obama an “apologist” for radical Islam. On December 5th he told Iowans that the attorney-general, Loretta Lynch, had threatened to prosecute “anyone that has the temerity to stand up and speak against radical Islamic terrorism”. Untrue: Ms Lynch promised to prosecute anyone inciting anti-Muslim violence. Still, Mr Cruz earned cheers for daring Ms Lynch to arrest him for calling Islamic terrorism “evil” and for pledging that “in the United States we will not enforce sharia law”. He calls Mr Obama “obsessed with disarming” Americans, even though, he tells supporters: “You get rid of the bad guys by using our guns.”
To date the Texan senator has declined to condemn Mr Trump’s ban on Muslims. On December 8th Mr Cruz said he disagreed with that ban, instead promoting his own plans to bar refugees from such terror-wracked states as Syria and Iraq. In the next breath Mr Cruz commended Mr Trump for “standing up” and focusing attention on the need to secure America’s borders.
In some polls of the Republican presidential field, Mr Trump and Mr Cruz share half of all supporters between them. At home they hint that the government is bent on harming Americans. Abroad, they seem happy to let their country be seen as xenophobic—though it is hard to see how IS will ever be beaten without Muslim allies. At a moment of public panic, both are behaving with a rare cynicism. Even if voters eventually rebuff their fear-mongering, this election will leave scars.