Libertarian Leanings

The Border Wall Fight

Shall we settle in with our popcorn for the upcoming, sure to be entertaining, border wall fight?  Ordinarily, I would be pessimistic about the outcome.  Republicans have a bad habit of losing these kinds of budget fights, but I don't have the same misgivings over this one.  Why is that, you might ask?  Trump.

Trump knows what Democrats would rather not say.  Democrats do not want border security.  No matter what you hear Democrats say, they don't want border security. In one of her rare moments of sincerity, Hillary told a group of investors what Democrats really want — open borders.

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that's as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere," Clinton reportedly said to investors in a paid speech she gave to Brazilian Banco Itau in 2013.

Though Democrats have voted for border security in the past, including a border wall, Democrats' long range goal, as stated by Hillary, is open borders.  Open borders will facilitate the demographic shift that has been at the heart of Democratic strategies for achieving permanent progressive majorities. 

Until the 1960s, the surrounding neighborhood of Boyle Heights was far more mixed and less Hispanic than it is today. Jewish immigrants lived there, as did a large Japanese community. There were immigrants from Yugoslavia, Armenia, Russia and even a few Irish.

Bit by bit, they moved away to better neighborhoods, were displaced by urban renewal projects or simply died off, leaving behind no or too few descendants, and Mexicans moved in to fill the vacuum. They came across the nearby border in growing numbers, legally or illegally, searching for a new and better home. Today, about 100,000 people live in Boyle Heights, and 95,000 of them have Hispanic roots. President Barack Obama's reelection was decided in places like Boyle Heights.

By the time Barack Obama won re-election, Democrats were already committed to the abandonment of their traditional core of support, the blue collar union workers, in favor of a strategy of identity politics and unlimited immigration.  Blue collar abandonment became official when Hillary told the a gathering of high dollar Democrat donors, that those who were once a pillar of Democrat support were now "her basket of deplorables."  Trump had picked up the banner of their cause — jobs, manufacturing jobs — and they were throwing their support to him.

The other day President Trump invited Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over to the White House to discuss, among other issues, the border wall, and much to their chagrin, he also invited the press to come in with their cameras.  Trump does the unconventional, if not the unexpected and he fights to win.

As you watch the video above, you can't help but notice, Schumer and Pelosi were not about happy having the border conversation in full view of the American people.  Trump, on the other hand, was really enjoying it.  He relished the role of Reality President, even though he couldn't tell them, "You're fired."  Trump could, and did, catch them by surprise and he did make them very uncomfortable.  He told them, very publicly, that he would be "proud to shut down the government for border security," setting up a confrontation in which both sides are now dug in.  This isn't the way Republicans usually get into these things, but we're dealing with Trump here.

As for the Democrats, there is a formula for the way these things play out, that they've followed for years, and that they'll follow again.  It starts with careful selection of the issues over which to go into battle.  Important issues for Democrats have three important characteristics. 

1. Democrats must get something out of it, a substantial gain, financial or other, for the Democratic party.  It need not benefit America, Americans, or anybody other than the Democrats.
   
2. It must cast Democrats in the role the fair minded and compassionate champions of those less fortunate. 
3. It must afford opportunities for "exposing" Republicans' "real motives," greed, racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia — you name it.

In the past when Democrats had faithfully followed their script, Republicans would resist briefly then give up in fear that mud-flinging Democrats would get some of the mud to stick, and voters would then punish them on election day. 

The immigration and border security fit the Democrat model perfectly. For decades Democrats have been systematically promoting illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, and lax immigration enforcement in order to pack the voter rolls with Democrat-voting migrants. I should note that this dovetails with Democrats' opposition to any kind of legislation requiring states to confirm that a voter is legally entitled to vote.

1. Maintaining that pipeline of left leaning voters from south of the border is a huge benefit to the Democrats. In fact, a cutoff in the flow of those new voters poses a threat to their future electoral success.
   
2. The plight of migrants at the border, especially the children, sets the stage for Democrat moral preening. The wall is immoral, they say.
   
3. It's been the go to tactic for Democrats to call Republicans racist, but the issue of security along the Mexican border lends itself to more strident accusations since Latin Americans are generally considered non-white.

If we were back in pre-Trump days, we would watch in dismay as Republicans followed their own script for capitulation.  "Moderate" Republicans, eager to prove their commitment to "diversity" and to demonstrate "statesmanship," would "reach across the aisle" for "compromise."  Today, Republicans know they have to counter the Democrats at each point of attack.  With Trump showing them they way, I believe they can and will.

1. Immigration and border security are important to Americans of all races and creeds, and Trump is not about to allow Democrats to import a new electorate from Central and South America to replace the American electorate that is already here. 
2. Democrats are far from compassionate when they entice people by the millions to travel through territory controlled by drug cartels in the fading hope of reaching sanctuary and under the table jobs. 
3. The race card has worn thin.  It's not racist for Republicans or for anybody else to support border integrity.

Pelosi is betting it will play out according to the old script, confident that the threat of punishment at the polls will force the Republican side to give in.  She is leaving no room for compromise. 

"Are you willing to come up and give him some of this money for the wall?" Guthrie asked. "Because apparently that's the sticking point."

"No, no. Nothing for the wall," Pelosi responded. "We're talking about border security."

"We can go through this all back and forth—no," Pelosi continued. "How many more times can we say no? Nothing for the wall."

It may not work out so well for her this time. Trump and the Republicans are either confident that matching her hard line stance won't come back to bite them, or confident that failing to match it would be worse.  I suspect congressional Republicans realize that caving in will be worse for them.  If they give up on the wall and fail to secure the border, they can kiss future elections goodbye.  The formerly moderate Republican Senator Lindsey Graham apparently agrees.

"To Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats: No Wall Money, No Deal," Graham tweeted on Friday.

Republicans are catching on to how Trump fights.  As he wins his fights he wins more and more Republicans to his side.  Complain of his demeanor, his tweets, and his manners if you will, but Trump has been demonstrating to Republicans that it's possible to actually stand for something and win.  But they've got to fight and it's not always pretty.

Democrats have a knack for flexibility.  What they have voted for on earlier occasions they denounce as racist and white nationalist today.  Aren't they forever getting "woke."  It's a wonder their voters survive the whiplash, but perhaps Democrat voters think they're in on the deal.  They think they understand how Democrats have to pander to those not as smart and discerning as themselves, the people who don't have sense enough to vote for their own best interests.  Democrat voters are happy to elect leaders who are wise enough to impose what the less intelligent people can't perceive is best.

However, flexibility on issues has its drawbacks.  Democrats depend on the new crop of voters each year who don't know, and couldn't care less, how their leaders voted last year.  Therein lies the importance of border security, which Democrats will pretend to be for, while doing everything in their power to undermine, or flat out prevent.

Trump has a knack for flushing out the hypocrisy in Democrats. It's a new ballgame.  Don't count on Trump losing it.

Last updated January 6,2019, 9:03 AM.

2018 – A Look Back

Forget what Time Magazine says about its 2018 Person of the Year.  In 2018 it was Trump again, a fact that was affirmed by none other than Time Magazine's executive editor, Ben Goldberger.

The designation wasn't intended as a specific message to the magazine's runner-up choice, President Donald Trump, who has denounced "fake news" and called some reporters enemies of the people, said Ben Goldberger, executive editor.

It wasn't intended as a specific message?  Pardon my skepticism.  Let me stop here and state up front, journalism can be a dangerous, life threatening, life ending occupation.  With rare exceptions, the awards journalists get are well deserved.  At the same time, it's no good pretending that there have not been those exceptions.  The New York Times proudly displays a Pulitzer Prize won in the 1930s by Walter Duranty for a series of articles extolling the wonders of a supposed Soviet workers paradise.  In reality millions were dying of starvation in the Ukraine from Stalin's collectivism induced famine.  Duranty and the Times knew it and ignored it, publishing a work of fiction glorifying the benefits of communism instead.

But back to 2018, why is this the Year of the Journalist, and not any of the preceding eight years?  Because Trump.  When the Obama Justice Department was caught spying on Fox News and Associated Press reporters, did Time Magazine champion their cause with Person of the Year honors?  No.  Nor did Time Magazine indicate any concerns about very real threats to journalism posed by Obama administration cyber attacks against Sharyl Attkisson, a reporter for CBS at the time.

Time's award, it seemed, was triggered by the death of Jamal Kashoggi whose horrific murder was ordered by someone high up in the Saudi government.  But Kashoggi's murder did not signal a rise in political targeting of journalists.  According to The Committee to Protect Journalists, the number of journalists confirmed to have been targeted in 2015 was 73 compared to 53 in 2018.  In fact over the eight years of Obama's presidency, on average there were 10 more journalists confirmed to have been killed each year than in 2018.  Where were the honors then?

In 2018 journalists get the honors because Trump has been calling out the press for its frequently biased, misleading, and dishonest reporting. 

Time said that 2018 has been marked by manipulation and abuse of information, along with efforts by governments to foment mistrust of the facts.

Trump makes everybody crazy.  And it's not just the liberal media that are suffering nervous breakdowns. Trump is a nightmare for the left.  Liberal pundits have wet dreams of impeachment. Here's Robert Reich with a left wing confection of and wild, unrealistic imaginings.

Where would we be if a president could simply shut down the government when he doesn’t get his way? If he could stop federal prosecutions he doesn’t like and order those he wants? If he could whip up public anger against court decisions he disapproves of? If he could mobilize the military to support him, against Congress and the judiciary?

NeverTrump conservatives like Jonah Goldberg are having fits too.  I don't know what Goldberg's problem is, but he just doesn't seem to get Trump.  I don't know whether Goldberg really doesn't understand, or he's in denial.

Nearly all of the controversies that have bedeviled Trump’s administration are the direct result of his character, not his ideology. To be sure, ideology plays a role, amplifying both the intensity of anger from his left-wing critics and the intensity of his transactional defenders. Many of the liberal critics shrieking about the betrayal of the Kurds implicit in Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria would be applauding if a President Clinton had made the same decision. And many of the conservatives celebrating the move would be condemning it.

But Trump’s refusal to listen to advisers; his inability to bite his tongue; his demonization and belittling of senators who vote for his agenda but refuse to keep quiet when he does or says things they disagree with; his rants against the First Amendment; his praise for dictators and insults for allies; his need to create new controversies to eclipse old ones; and his inexhaustible capacity to lie and fabricate history: All of this springs from his character.

Goldberg tries to peddle the notion that Trump is anti-democratic when he hits back at his enemies. Trump routinely calls out members of the media for inaccurate, misleading, or downright dishonest reporting.  When he does that, Goldberg tries to sell it as an attack on the First Amendment.  In doing so Goldberg is actually using a technique he describes in a book he wrote called The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. Here is an example that he provides in the book's product description:

"One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter: Sure, if the other man is an idiot. Was Martin Luther King Jr. a terrorist? Was Bin Laden a freedom fighter?"

Calling Osama bin Laden a "freedom fighter" is not very different from saying that Trump "rants against the First Amendment" when he is really calling out Goldberg's fellow journalists for using the very technique that Goldberg complained about in his book.  But the book was published in 2013, which has left Goldberg with five or six years to revise his thinking on the subject. Sadly for Goldberg, Trump supporters know the difference between Goldberg and reality.  Complaints about biased or dishonest news reporting are not complaints about the First Amendment, no matter how badly Goldberg wants to make Trump out to be a fascist.

Looking back over the year, it's pretty obvious that Trump has been playing Goldberg and the rest of the liberal media "like a banjo at an Ozark hoedown," to quote Marvin Boggs in the movie Red 2.  Creating new controversies is Trump's way of focusing the media on subjects they'd rather not cover. Recall when newly elected Trump tweeted about Obama wiretapping his campaign.  "Without any evidence!" screeched the media in response.  Fast forward:  Is there anyone, anywhere who doesn't know that the Obama intelligence community had the Trump campaign under surveillance?  And, that such surveillance was unethical at best and most likely illegal.

Tweets will not go away.  Trump's tweets are obnoxious and annoying to Goldberg and the liberal media because they provide a platform that they can't filter.  Trump, the real Person of 2018, has controlled the news cycles from wire to wire, and in so doing he's forced the Democrats to oppose positions they once claimed to favor, and to fight for positions they once pretended to be against.  Democrats were always opposed to border security, but they always pretended to support it.  Trump is forcing the Democrats to be more truthful, and they don't like it.  Democrats want the flexibility to pretend they stand for whatever will help them at the moment, but Trump is tearing down the facade, ripping off the mask.

Expect the same in 2019.  Break out the popcorn, the border wall fight is about to begin in earnest.  Don't count on Trump losing it.

Last updated: January 2, 2019