Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Offers Non-Compromise to End Shutdown
President Trump made a statement on TV Saturday afternoon at 4 pm Eastern Time on a three-day week-end to offer his solution to the government shutdown and immigration problem. The timing alone was enough to prove it was not a serious offer. The timing was set to take the evening news away from the anti-Trump women's marches held across the country. Not only did his offer fail to gain traction among any Democrats (who called it dead on arrival), but also it infuriated some on the anti-immigrant right as being "amnesty." Mr. Art of the Deal is still negotiating with his own side.
The Washington Post stated "Trump proposed offering a reprieve on his attempts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from some Latin American and African nations [for a period of 3 years], in exchange for building hundreds of miles of barriers on the southern U.S. border and hiring thousands of new law enforcement agents to be deployed there." In other words, he would get the permanent things he wanted and after three years, the Democrats would have nothing to show for it.
Naturally, the Democratic leadership laughed the proposal out of the room. They maintain that the government must re-open and then they would be in the mood to make a deal. "The president must sign these bills to reopen government immediately and stop holding the American people hostage with this senseless shutdown," Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said. That is a noble sentiment, but as Ms. Pelosi almost certainly knows, no hostage-taker releases the captives and then starts negotiating. The hostages are exchanged for things the terrorist wants.
The anti-immigrant right also took umbrage at the proposal. Ann Coulter, who along with Rush Limbaugh convinced Mr. Trump to shutdown the government in an attempt to look tough, tweeted, "We voted for Trump and got Jeb!" The allusion to Governor Jeb Bush here is not a compliment, as he is a sane voice on immigration. The fascist news site Breitbart made a point of saying that even with the proposed $5.7 billion to build a wall, most of the border would not have a physical barrier separating the US and Mexican territory.
It is this carping from the cheap seats on the right that truly bothers Mr. Trump. He believes that he needs a solid base to continue in office, and that is something he has believed since he was inaugurated two years and one day ago. The trouble is that he has not added to the base by offering a broader tent to people in the middle. It is his focus on satisfying his base that is the issue here. In truth, he has shown himself to be a follower not a leader. A leader would make a decision that his base might find initially unpalatable, and he would make them swallow it.
However, the actual issues at hand have been forgotten, and the entire dispute has become a symbolic fight between the White House and the House Democrats. "The shutdown has turned into a test of strength between the president and Washington Democrats, particularly the speaker, and how it ends and when will tell us a lot about whether they can forge a relationship over the next two years," said Michael Steel, a GOP strategist and former aide to Republican House Speakers John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan.
Ms. Pelosi is at heart a deal maker, but she holds the gavel now because of a new freshperson class of Congresshumans who are not there to make deals but to make the president's life miserable. While the president has painted himself into a corner, Ms. Pelosi is not entirely free to move about the cabin. If a penny is going to be spent on Mr. Trump's Maginot Line, those new legislators will want to see more than a pound of flesh.
Both sides are rapidly reaching the eyeball-to-eyeball stage, and that is not going to be good for the country. Whoever blinks first loses, and that will have serious ramifications as Mr. Steel noted. If Ms. Pelosi blinks, she loses her ability to lead easily a unified House opposition. If Mr. Trump blinks, those first-term legislators will have acquired a taste for blood that isn't going to be easily satisfied.
The debt ceiling will be reached sometime in March. The nation will get to go through this again if the politicians are not careful. On current form, they are not going to be.
© Copyright 2019 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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