The main ideological project of @nytopinion since the election has been to make it respectable for white elites to talk about defending America as a majority-white country.
From Mark Lilla on "identity politics" to Ross Douthat on immigration bargaining, the throughline is an argument about the necessity of securing the existence of white people and a future for white children.
The political context, which Stephen Miller understands, is that the Republicans had almost exhausted the political power of white resentment.
There weren't enough voters for a whites-only party to win a popular majority in a presidential election, and the trend line was getting even more unfavorable.
Republicans either had to stop practicing whites-only politics or they had to take power without popular majorities and then change the demographic trends.
They went with the second option: racial gerrymandering and a freakishly narrow electoral win, and now a program of voter suppression and ethnic cleansing.
The ICE rampage and the assault on DACA are designed to show how ugly they're willing to be in defense of a white nation.
And this inspires respectable white pundits to try to appease them by offering them what they really want: cutbacks on legal nonwhite immigration, to save the all-white political bloc from melting away.
When Ross Douthat talks about bargaining with Stephen Miller, he's talking about making room for white retrenchment to be a policy goal.
Historically, giving racists what they want has not been an effective way of reducing the political power of racism.
It may, however, reduce the visible ugliness and the discomfort that people like Douthat and Lilla feel when the conflict is in the open.
