Winners and Losers and Dreamers

The Republicans are claiming victory and the Democrats admitting defeat after a deal that ended the latest partial government shutdown in record time, but it’s not apparent to us that anybody won or lost anything that won’t be quickly forgotten.

The deal that minority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and a sufficient number of his caucus agreed to fully funds the the government in exchange for a promise by majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell to have a vote of some sort at some undetermined date about the so-called “dreamers” who were illegally smuggled into the country as children, which is pretty much the same deal that was on offer prior to the vote that shut down parts of the government over the weekend. That was bad enough from a Democratic perspective that all the left-wing pundits were wailing about it, and their anger alone was sufficient reward for all the right-wing pundits to gloat about it.

The deal only fully funds the federal government for the next 17 days, though, and by then no one will remember who voted for what, and in the meantime everyone involved looks petty and stupid. McConnell’s promise to put the “dreamer” problem up for a vote was made on the Senate floor and recorded in the congressional record, too, and when he’s eventually forced to keep that promise the Republicans will likely find themselves in a losing position.

The “dreamers” are so-called because the Democrats wrote a bill to grant them permanent status that was cleverly called Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, and its acronym makes gives those alien minors that very sympathetic nickname. They’re a sympathetic lot, anyway, as they can hardly be blamed for being brought here as children, the vast majority haven’t caused any noticeable problems for anyone, and a significant and photogenic number of them are attending college or serving in the military or performing some other sort of useful labor for the country. That wasn’t enough to get the DREAM act enacted in Congress, but it kept the Republicans from preventing President Barack Obama from temporarily more or less enacting by an executive order for a Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals, which had a rather cacophonous acronym but kept all the “dreamers” who could prove they aren’t gang-bangers or welfare mooches to hang around indefinitely.

What can be done by executive order can just as easily be undone executive order, though, and President Donald Trump decided to sign one that would leave all those “dreamers” susceptible to deportation back to countries they only vaguely remember by March. His hard-line anti-illegal immigrant supporters loved it, but all the polls showed that a much larger number of Americans hated it, so Trump quickly explained that it was one of his three-dimensional chess moves to force congress to pass that DREAM act he excoriated on the campaign trail. He even wound up telling a televised bipartisan gathering of senators that he would happily sign any “bill of love” for the “dreamers,” whom he claimed to love, along with all kids.

That didn’t play well with Trump’s hard-line anti-illegal immigrant supporters, with his usual talk radio defenders crying betrayal, so he quickly clarified that he’d sign any “bill of love” so long as it included funding for his big, beautiful sea-to-shining-sea border wall and other draconian border enforcement measures. After that his chief of staff was assuring the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that Trump’s previously “uninformed” promises of a border wall had “evolved,” which was followed by an indignant presidential “tweet” that he has never evolved, and by the time the negotiations to prevent a partial government shutdown went south both the majority leader and the minority of the Senate were complaining they had no idea what the president wanted.

At this point Trump has taken more positions than his pal Stormy Daniels — insert risqué rim shot here — and there’s no telling where he’ll wind up. If he caves to some soft-hearted protections for the “dreamers” without sufficient concessions from the Democrats he’ll annoy his hard-line anti-illegal immigrant supporters, which he hates to do. If he winds up deporting a bunch of photogenically sympathetic soldiers and college students and otherwise upstanding semi-citizens back to countries they only vaguely recall his ratings will take a bigger hit, and he might hate that even worse.

Perhaps it’s all some three-dimensional chess-playing that will arrive at such an artful deal that even the most outright xenophobic portion of his hard-line anti-illegal immigration supporters will join hands with all those “open borders” left-wing crazies to sing his praises, but we doubt it. Trump’s much boasted-about deal-making genius didn’t prevent the last partial government shutdown, by all accounts those hated Republican establishment guys in congress had much more to do with it ending over a mere weekend, and Trump looks unable to long delay the inevitable next partial government shutdown.

— Bud Norman

The Conventional Wisdom and Its Pitfalls

One should always be skeptical of the conventional wisdom, or at least occasionally reconsider it. Not so long ago it was hard to find a poll or pundit best-selling non-fiction publication that didn’t proclaim the Republican party’s opposition to unrestrained illegal immigration and discomfort with ethnic identity politics in general and certain queasiness about abortion and noticeable reluctance to embrace same-sex marriage would lead to its demise, what with the changing demographics and the hip young voters and the arc of history bending toward liberalism and all, but for the moment all of these issues seem to be working against the Democrats.

One day after the Republicans in Congress held hearings featuring the heartbreaking testimony of several Americans whose beloved family members have been killed by illegal immigrants, President Barack Obama expanded his executive actions to exempt an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s illegal immigrants from the threat of deportation. The president’s actions were explained in the usual terms of compassion, of course, but the lack of compassion for those murdered and rape and robbed by the more unsavory of those illegal immigrants has not gone unnoticed. Certainly not in Texas, where the Department of Public Safety has counted 611,234 crimes, including 2,993 murders, committed by illegal aliens since Obama took office, dreary enough numbers that are understated because they only include those illegal aliens who were previously fingerprinted by state and federal authorities. Among the national total of people killed by illegal immigrants is the young Kate Steinle, who was shot and killed while walking in the “sanctuary city” of San Francisco by an illegal immigrant with multiple felony convictions, and although no one in the administration has even spoken her name, except for a Department of Homeland Security official who mispronounced it, the president has announced his intention to veto a bill that would withhold federal funds from the “sanctuary cities” that protect the likes of her murderer. The polls and pundits and best-selling non-fiction publications will be hard-pressed to explain how the Democrats derive any advantage from this.

So far the main beneficiary seems to be Republican contender Donald Trump, the real estate mogul and reality-show star and noxious blowhard, whose outspoken and wildly overstated insistence that every illegal immigrant has murderous and rapine intent has drawn all the media attention and thus propelled him to the top of all those questionable polls in the Republican nomination race, but we expect that some other candidate with similar but more carefully spoken views will eventually prevail and enjoy the same political benefits. Throw in the effect that illegal immigration is almost certainly having on the wages of low-skilled and unskilled workers, the added strain on an already overwhelmed social welfare system, and the inevitable consequences of modern liberalism’s insistence that the broader society assimilate to the new arrivals rather than the other way around, and the Democrats, who have lately been talking a lot about the wages of unskilled workers and the need for a more generous welfare system and communitarian values, seem to have chosen the weakest of all possible positions on the issue.

There’s always the race issue to be played, of course, but that’s also lately become more complicated. Those low-skilled and unskilled laborers whose wages are depressed by illegal immigration are inordinately black, and several of the families who gave those heartbreaking testimonies about their loved ones who were murdered by illegal immigrants were also black, and the lily-white contenders for the Democratic nomination are already having a hard time dealing with a “Black Lives Matter” movement that will boo a candidate off a stage for suggesting that other lives matter at all, and given the temporary racial make-up of the country it’s hard to see how the Democratic Party’s attempts to divide the country will add up to an electoral majority. Throw in the Democrats’ staunch defense of affirmative action policies that punish Asian-Americans for their education efforts, along with the economic and quality-of-life effects their policies have on native-born Hispanics and blacks as well as whites, and Donald Trump won’t be the only the Republican contender savvy enough to question the conventional wisdom.

Meanwhile, the country remains as divided as ever on the question of abortion, and the hidden-camera accounts of Planned Parenthood officials sipping wine and supping at fine restaurants as they negotiate the price of aborted fetuses can only push public opinion in the Republicans’ direction, and the rest of those social issues that were supposed spell the Republicans’ demise are also working out contrary to the conventional wisdom. Three separate polls taken since the Supreme Court’s decree that same-sex marriage was somehow intended by the 18th Century ratifiers of the Constitution, just like the right to a first trimester abortion, all show a decline in support for the decision as well as a marked increase in support for the right of businesses to refuse participate in same-sex nuptials. The Democrats can claim the cause of tolerance, but until they’re willing to tolerate any dissent on these issues the claim will be unconvincing.

The Republicans can still easily lose the advantage, especially if they nominate a real estate mogul and reality-show star and obvious buffoon such as Trump, but it won’t be because they’ve stuck to principles more timeless than the conventional wisdom.

— Bud Norman