Musk, Ramaswamy, and the tension within MAGA

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have created a firestorm within the MAGA movement through statements they made about legal immigration. Musk wrote:

The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.

Later, he added:

I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.

Picking up on Musk’s reference to “super motivated” people, Ramaswamy wrote:

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

The pushback from certain MAGA precincts was immediate. Laura Loomer, Ann Coulter and Matt Gaetz were among the critics.

Musk is right, I think, about the shortage of super-talented American engineers. The shortage has been a source of longstanding complaint among tech executives, and they should know.

As for desiring the top ~0.1% of engineering talent (or even the top 1%) to work in America, I don’t see how anyone could be against that.

Ramaswamy’s comments are more controversial, but I think he’s basically right. The cultural differences between the native born and immigrants from Asia, as groups, are obvious to anyone with connections to both cultures (my connection to the Asian side is through family). It was nicely summarized by a white Yale student who said she judged the seriousness of a class the first day by the ratio of Asians to white males wearing baseball caps backwards.

This Wall Street Journal article by Phil Gramm and Robert Topel makes the point. Based on their experience running a scholarship fund, plus research by the Institute for Family Studies, they highlight cultural differences between immigrant and non-immigrant families in America — differences that favor the former. And their conclusions aren’t limited to Asian-American families.

Conservatives have long criticized our culture and our education system as unserious, among other defects. In fact, a standard conservative argument against mass immigration used to be that our culture and education system are too corrupted to enable the kind of assimilation associated with past successful waves of immigration.

In sum,, it’s plausible, and I think at least partially correct, for Ramaswamy to tie the comparative lack of American talent in science, math, and engineering to the lack of seriousness in our culture and education system.

The media’s take on the comments of Musk and Ramaswamy and the blowback is that they have exposed a rift in the MAGA movement on the issue of immigration. My view is that it does, indeed, point to a significant crack, but one that will not manifest itself primarily on issues of immigration.

It’s not difficult to see how differences within MAGA on immigration can be bridged. Give Silicon Valley its foreign engineers and stop illegal immigration.

Obviously, it’s not quite that simple. There will be disagreements about the numbers and kinds of legal immigrants to admit. There may be differences on how far to go in the quest to stop illegal immigration. But these issues shouldn’t tear MAGA apart.

Here’s the more fundamental divide. The MAGA Republican party still contains a fair portion of traditional conservative Republican DNA. I’m referring, for example, to belief in personal responsibility, self-reliance, meritocracy, and small government.

Though Musk and Ramaswamy aren’t traditional conservative Republicans, their comments (quoted above) and their role in DoGE reflect this DNA. Indeed, they shout traditional conservative values.

The populist side of MAGA has other ideas. It holds that the woes of ordinary Americans are not, to any meaningful degree, due to the habits and culture of ordinary Americans. Rather, they are, in large part, the fault of the very elites our meritocracy has produced.

This side of MAGA wants all the benefits it can get from the government. Shrinking government is fine in theory, but not if it means less free stuff.

And let’s be mindful, as I’m sure Trump is, that this side of MAGA supplied the votes that carried him to victory in the three “Blue Wall” states.

The difference in values I’ve just described — which, of course, ties to differences in economic class — is likely to produce policy differences on a range of issues. Immigration is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

To illustrate the tension, consider that growing income inequality isn’t viewed as much of a problem (if a problem at all) by traditional conservatives. But it certainly bothers many in the populist side of MAGA (and, of course, it’s an obsession on the left).

The policies advanced by traditional conservatives and by the likes of Musk and Ramaswamy are likely to increase income inequality. It’s not that these policies are bad for the poor. It’s just that a healthy free enterprise system is bound to vault a goodly number of people into wealth and to make the rich even richer. Low incomes will rise, too, but they can increase by only so much.

Similarly, a strong stock market — the kind Trump hopes to see on his watch — will increase the wealth of those heavily invested in it, mostly the very well off. The lower middle class won’t benefit nearly as much and the poor, scarcely at all.

When the president was a stumbling, elderly Democrat doing a poor job, the division in MAGA wasn’t a problem. Both sides of the MAGA divide had a strong interest in electing a Republican. Trump, with feet on both sides of it, ended up being a pretty formidable Republican.

Even with Trump in power, there are views common to both sides of the MAGA divide that can help hold things together. I’m thinking of certain cultural issues, for example — not the deep ones Ramaswamy was talking about, but specific subject areas such as DEI and LGBTQ.

Even on the economic side, it may be possible to square the circle. Multi-class coalitions are sometimes sustainable. The Democrats have sustained them in the past.

Smaller government done right should be able to deliver services as well or better than bigger government. Insistence on personal responsibility, self-reliance and a degree of meritocracy might prove somewhat compatible with the populist impulse.

A skillful leader might be able to navigate his way through the tensions and contradictions in the MAGA GOP. But the controversy resulting from the comments of Musk and Ramaswamy shows it won’t be easy.