How is the Shutdown Going ?

We are now in week three of the partial government “shutdown” over the refusal of Democrats to fund any of Trump’s wall. They see this as another “Read My Lips” situation which, if they can make Trump back down, it will kill his re-election campaign just as it did to Bush in 1992.

But Trump’s base takes the wall itself seriously, and, like George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign pledge on taxes, the wall has become the president’s “read my lips” albatross. His supporters may not abandon him over it, but Trump’s re-election hinges entirely on their enthusiasm. Yes, they will vote for him, but will they engage in the get-out-the-vote activities that drive to the polls enough additional voters to put Trump over the top?

How is that going ? Even Texas Monthly, no friend of Republicans agrees.

Jet skis dropping off pregnant women. Chinese border crossers in fancy workout attire. A park full of could-be spies. These sights of the Rio Grande are almost hallucinatory, but they don’t seem to alarm Spratte. They seem to fatigue him. Not long ago, he says, agents’ mouths would drop open when they’d hear about a group of fifty immigrants getting caught. Now, he says, “if you tell me, I’ve got a group of fifty, I need help, I would laugh at you. If you said, I’ve got a group of three hundred, now that would be cool, because that would be a new record. And the records are only going to keep increasing.” (According to Spratte, agents in the Valley have had a single pickup of around 280 immigrants.)

Trump visited the wall yesterday and CNN’s Jim Acosta gave Trump a hand at making his case.

I know this might be hard for you to comprehend Jimbo, but the reason why all of Twitter has been mocking you today is because you were at a part of the border WITH A WALL. So yes, of course it was working. Replicate that across the border & we’ll all be safer. #RealNews #ByeBye

It did not look too good for Acosta to brag about how safe it was near a wall. OR fence, if you prefer.

The Democrat strategy was also questioned by their own side.

But that doesn’t mean the Democrats won’t blow it.

The surest way for them to do so would be to keep on their present path of emphasizing that the government must be reopened because of how the shutdown is hurting federal workers.

Government employees are not the most sympathetic figures in the present controversy. The “shutdown” has inconvenienced few citizens as the Obama tactic of trying to inflict as much pain as possible is not in use this time.

Then, of course, anything that detracts from the narrative is excluded. KUSI anchors revealed on air that CNN requested, then declined, to use their border reporter after finding out his coverage of a broadly successful San Diego border barrier didn’t match their preferred narrative.

Whoops !

The final act is yet to open but probably is related to this. The Ninth Circuit once again ruled that the injunction against deporting DACA recipients should stand. This happened before and the Supreme Court had only 8 members at the time, who tied 4 to 4. Now there are 9 Supreme Court justices.

In an opinion issued today, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld a federal district court’s order requiring the government to keep the DACA program in place. Although the 9th Circuit’s ruling went against the government, the decision likely helped the government’s cause at the Supreme Court, because the justices rarely grant petitions for review before the courts of appeals have ruled; the justices prefer to have the benefit of those courts’ opinions, even if they often do not follow them.

The challengers’ response to the government’s petition is currently due on December 5. Assuming that the court does not extend that deadline, the justices could announce as soon as mid-January whether they will take up the dispute.

The last time this happened, the Democrats were negotiating with Trump. As soon as the ruling was upheld, they stopped. Why legislate if the Courts will do it for you ? Remember, Obama himself said his DACA ruling was unconstitutional.

11 thoughts on “How is the Shutdown Going ?”

  1. Steve Hayward at Powerline has has the best solution .

    Start privatizing agencies.

    So we’re hearing that air traffic controllers are starting to call in sick and might abandon their posts, with obvious consequences for civilian air travel. Hmmm. . . Do air traffic controllers really want to go there? They must have short memories of Ronald Reagan firing 15,000 illegally striking controllers in 1981, and instead of bringing civilian air travel to a halt, Reagan sent military controllers into the towers. Regular schedules were restored within days. You can easily imagine Trump doing this—and it would be a much more fitting use of the emergency powers he’s been thinking of trying to use to build the wall.

    More than that, why not go all the way and simply privatize air traffic control as Canada did more than two decades ago? (In fact, some smaller airports in the U.S. do in fact contract out their local air traffic control functions rather than use the FAA.) The airlines would likely be enthusiastic about such as move, as there is good evidence that Canada’s air traffic control works better than ours, at considerably lower cost.

    Plus TSA, of course.

  2. Simply saying again. A wall doesn’t have to solve everything to be successful and no one ever said it did. That is a straw man repeatedly erected by the opponents. If it does some good I’ll be pleased. If $5B solves 20% of the problem, how is that not great?

  3. Trump should invite Pelosi and Schumer to the White House every day, and every day bring in the press and say “So, Chuck, who exactly do YOU think we can deport? So Nancy, what do YOU think we should do with groups of 300 Hondurans who show up in the middle of the desert and want in?” Make them squirm and dodge in front of the cameras.

  4. I see the left (NPR) now talking about how visa abuse is an even more common source of illegal immigration.

    This, it seems to me, to be even easier for Trump to deal with. Just crack down on the State Department, which I assume, controls visas and renewals.

    New enforcement should not even involve Congress.

  5. I’d like to see a wall, just to stick it to the left but it is really a just symbol of moral decline. It is only necessary because Americans no longer care enough to enforce their own laws, maintain their own standards and do what has to be done. The next democrat administration will abandon it and soon enough the cartels will have a thousand holes through it and the problem will be the same as ever: A lack of will and a lack of courage to defend that which should be defended.

  6. “Americans no longer care”
    There’s no America anymore, not the way there used to be. Whoever recently said that the left has no foreign enemies, only domestic ones, was completely spot on.

  7. The next democrat administration will abandon it and soon enough the cartels will have a thousand holes through it and the problem will be the same as ever

    There is a great line from one of my favorite novels.

    They would return. Well, let them. It was sufficient for Montcalm to have held Quebec in his day and generation.

    It seems to me that a large proportion of the American people no longer deserve the legacy of freedom left to them by their parents and grandparents.

    It will be sufficient if it lasts until I am gone.

  8. “The next democrat administration”
    It is a certainty that the next time the Dems control Congress and the White House, on Day 1 in the morning they will abolish the filibuster and in the afternoon they will legalize all the illegals in the country.

  9. “It seems to me that a large proportion of the American people no longer deserve the legacy of freedom left to them by their parents and grandparents.”

    As someone once said, we mistake license for liberty.

    It is amazing how quickly things can change. In the course of a human lifetime, the English went from having an Empire on which the Sun Never Set to having nothing but a Royal Soap Opera That Never Ends. In much less than a human lifetime, San Francisco went from being the city everyone wanted to visit to being the city everyone avoids.

    But trends are not everywhere downwards. Over the same less than a human lifetime, China went from a backward country of bicycle-riding peasants to the workshop of the world, landing probes on the far side of the moon and building airports, roads, and railways which make Europe’s look Third World. The USSR collapsed, and people went through very hard times, but today St Petersburg and Moscow are more livable cities than London and Paris.

    Since no government can spend more than it takes in indefinitely, and no country can import more than it exports indefinitely, the poor old USA is most assuredly in for hard times. We should focus on keeping the flame alive, so that a better nation can emerge from the wreckage.

  10. It will be sufficient if it lasts until I am gone.

    Indeed. I cannot do anything after my watch is over. All I can do is be certain I do my job.

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