Border Wall Deal

In an effort to end the government shutdown and overcome the impasse on immigration reform, President Trump has offered Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats a deal that exchanges a three-year extension on the status of DACA recipients for the $5.7 billion in funding Trump seeks for the border wall as the first phase of a comprehensive immigration reform legislative package.

Politics is the art of making your problem someone else’s priority, and this most often occurs through the tactic of compromise whereby each party seeks to preserve its core demands while gradually acquiescing to the demands of the other until each reaches a point of satisfaction which concludes in a deal. President Trump honed his negotiating skills in the cutthroat New York real estate market which prepared him as well as anything to practice these skills in the cutthroat world of D.C. politics.

In a deal, one trades away the less important things in exchange for preserving the more important things while the opposition does the same. President Trump realizes that the children allowed into America under the DACA program are now young adults who have lived most of their lives in the United States and are ill-equipped to return to their home countries having little practical experience living in those countries. It matters not that the Obama administration had no business or authority to initiate the DACA program. What matters now is that these DACA program participants are, for all practical purposes, pretty much here to stay, so President Trump might as well try to get something out of this situation.

Not since Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon for $15 million in 1803 has a president negotiated so skillfully on behalf of the country. Jefferson doubled the size of the United States at a cost of less than three cents per acre while avoiding a costly war. President Trump has successfully torn up the flawed NAFTA deal and replaced it with a new arrangement negotiated with Canada and Mexico which realigns America’s interests as a priority in the deal. President Trump has shown the Chinese that he is willing to engage in a costly trade war to protect American trade along with his awareness that China stands to lose so much more than America in a trade war. The Chinese returned to the bargaining table because they realize China needs America’s markets much more than America needs China’s not-so-cheap-anymore labor. America can quickly reestablish its manufacturing base to satisfy the demands of American consumers, but China can’t establish markets to consume the output of its manufacturing base.

There are a great many conservatives opposed to allowing legal status for the DACA participants remembering as they do the amnesty President Reagan granted only to get stiffed by the Democrats later on. Conservatives are rightfully suspicious of Democrats when it comes to immigration issues, and allowing a path to citizenship for a class of immigrants who entered the country illegally sets a bad precedent for future immigrants who now see their shortcut at becoming citizens starting with illegal entry into America. Nancy Pelosi’s insistence that the government be reopened prior to consideration of border wall funding or immigration reform confirms the suspicions of conservatives who see her trying to remove President Trump’s leverage in this situation. Surely Pelosi doesn’t believe that the man who wrote The Art of the Deal is dumb enough to fall for such an amateurish negotiating tactic which removes his biggest point of leverage.

Conservatives would do well to remember that reaching a deal which moves the country forward involves compromising on substance in order to preserve principles. Conservatives want border protection which stops the flow of illegal immigrants, illegal drugs, and Islamic terrorists across our southern border, and the best option for securing our southern border is the construction of a wall to close off those portions where this flow presently occurs unimpeded. We conservatives would like to repatriate all those immigrants who entered illegally under the DACA program along with all the other illegal immigrants currently occupying our country. The reality is that this is at best a difficult proposition and will not even begin to become plausible until we staunch the flow of illegal immigrants currently pouring across our borders. President Trump isn’t even offering amnesty to the DACA participants, only a three-year extension to their legal status. Even if he eventually does offer amnesty to sweeten the pot, the reality is that it’s going to be extremely difficult to repatriate a bunch of immigrants who’ve grown up in this country. We conservatives should be willing to trade an extension to DACA legal status for border wall funding, and even be willing to offer amnesty to the DACA recipients if absolutely necessary.

Sure, conservatives got stiffed when Reagan trusted the Democrats, but that was because Reagan allowed the Democrats to remove his leverage without getting anything in return. Trump is insisting on one deal that gets border wall funding up front in exchange for the DACA extension and not some vague promise from Democrats to take up the issue later on. Trump is using his leverage of ending the government shutdown to extract concrete results instead of vague promises we all know Pelosi and the Democrats have no intention of honoring once the heat is off.

Just as conservatives should pay heed to the art of deal making, so should the Democrats. The prolonged focus on construction of a border wall is due to the Democrats’ intransigence at dealing with the issue due to their hatred of President Trump. The longer this issue festers, the more that Americans are forced to consider the merits of a border wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrant surging on our southern border demanding to be allowed into our country like a bunch of petulant entitlement-minded Democrats. Highlighting the flow of illegal drugs and Islamic terrorists across the border only sharpens support of a border wall as a prudent investment in the protection of the country. As the border wall standoff continues, Americans are learning more and more about the current situation on the border, and they don’t like what they’re seeing.

By offering this border funding deal to Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats, President Trump is skillfully boxing Pelosi into a corner. If Mitch McConnell can swing passage of Trump’s border wall deal in the Senate, then Pelosi will be forced to consider funding the deal or risk appearing obstructionist trapped in her hatred of president Trump. Americans have made it plain and clear over the last several decades that political obstructionism and gridlock are unacceptable unless it is to prevent the passage of really bad legislation such as Obamacare. Americans have acknowledged that illegal immigration is a crisis which needs to be addressed, most notably by supporting Donald Trump as he attacked the issue of illegal immigration and electing him as president over Crooked Hillary and her support for open borders.

The Democrats have worked tirelessly to portray the illegal immigration issue as one of compassion to those who are trapped in impoverished situations in their home countries while exacerbating the feelings of white guilt for which Democrats are so accomplished, yet support for open borders continues to fall among American voters while the issue of securing our southern border continues to receive increased support. Americans seeing illegal immigrants massed along the southern border arrogantly demanding entry into the country as if they somehow possessed the right to do so and looking like spoiled entitlement-minded lefty children while periodically staging surges in attempts to force their way into America sends the clear message that our borders are unsecured and require attention. These shocking revelations are accompanied by Democrats demanding compassion while ignoring the plight of hardworking Americans whose jobs and wages are threatened by these illegal immigrants who become eligible for generous welfare benefits while unemployed Americans go without in their own country. These blue-collar Americans voted for Trump because Democrats had ignored their predicament for far too long, and they’ll vote for Trump again because he is the only one giving their concerns a voice over the elitist Democrats selling them down the river.

Candidate Trump highlighted illegal immigration from the start of his campaign, and President Trump has worked to keep his campaign promises to the astonishment of the D.C. Swamp and the delight of his supporters. Trump realizes the importance of the illegal immigration issue to his supporters and realizes that this is the last chance to secure this campaign promise. Only be holding out for a win will President Trump have any chance to effect change over the next two years. If Pelosi and the Democrats are allowed to win this confrontation, then they will be emboldened to fight tooth and nail for their way on everything going forward as Trump will have lost the initiative.

This fight has been a long time coming, and its way overdue. There is never a good time for such a fight, a fact on which Democrats and their establishment Republican collaborators count, and prolonging the fight will only increase the amount of pain required to resolve the underlying issues. In the wake of the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks, we could not imagine returning to a sense of normalcy, but we adapted to a new normal involving the constant threat of Islamic attacks. We adapted to the new normal under the Obama administration of having a Congress which failed to pass yearly funding legislation and left the country lurching from one Continuing Resolution to the next over the last several years. If anything, Americans are resilient, and we will adapt to a prolonged government shutdown, a fact which should scare Pelosi and the Democrats as they pursue obstruction and gridlock to fan the flames of their hatred towards President Trump.

The question has become whether we are to remain a country abiding by a set of laws which acknowledges and seeks to protect the rule of law impartially applied, property rights as the cornerstone of a thriving free enterprise system, and sound currency to protect the purchasing power of Americans, or are we to become another lawless, third world, banana republic governed by a ruling class promising the people endless amenities to keep them enslaved in a degenerating system while the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to increase until America declines into the oblivion of history as just another footnote on a failed experiment in government. America currently enjoys the highest standard of living in world history, but once that standard of living is lost, then we are all doomed to an existence of increased hardship unable to access the conveniences and luxuries we currently take for granted.

As part of settling the issue over America’s future direction, the government shutdown is also demonstrating to Americans that the country can function just fine with far fewer employees than are currently on government payrolls despite decades of Democrats insisting America’s demise was imminent without government expansion. Just as corporate America has been forced to reduce bloated payrolls to remain competitive, the government is long overdue in reducing its workforce to remove the dead weight of far too many civil servants occupying space secure in the knowledge they will never be fired due to the effort involved in overcoming the civil service red tape. As long as they keep a low profile and not make anyone angry, then these deadhead civil servants will be tolerated as a nuisance and left alone under the current system. A prolonged government shutdown may convince many of these deadheads to leave the government either through early retirement or the realization that they need to find a more sustainable situation. At the very least Americans will become used to the new normal of a much smaller federal government and less receptive to calls for government expansion.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are blinded by their hatred of President Trump, Nancy more so than Chuck who is content to follow her lead. Like the snowflake army of radical socialist Democrats supporting the rise of the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, Nancy is still fuming at the fact that Trump defeated Crooked Hillary, and she is content to take her frustration out on the American people by refusing to consider any position Trump supports. As far as Nancy is concerned, if Trump supports it, then she’s against it regardless of how much sense it makes. That’s a dangerous attitude to have in a House Speaker charged with leading the House in the important business of funding the government. Americans are in for a healthy dose of obstruction and gridlock over the next two years as Nancy petulantly demands her way.

Nancy isn’t helped by this freshman class of radical socialists clamoring for media attention and sucking the oxygen out of the room to the dismay of the establishment Democrats currently running the Party. Pelosi’s leadership team consists mostly of Democrats in their 80s seeking to govern from the old playbook Nancy used in her former stint as Speaker and oblivious to the radical socialism dragging the Democrat Party to the left. Pelosi has her hands full with current media darling Ocasio-Cortez whose outlandish pronouncements are eagerly quoted as the perfect lefty clickbait in the new world of online media.

In many ways, Ocasio-Cortez matches President Trump’s ability to recognize this new medium and exploit its power to reach people with a message, but she is not nearly as coherent as Trump and will soon sink into the status of online laughingstock for her stupidity. President Trump garners online media attention because he speaks truth to power which aggravates the Democrats to no end since they and their enablers have become the establishment they insist are still the generation which preceded them and which they must oppose, stuck in the past as they are. Ocasio-Cortez garners online attention because she utters incomprehensible and stupid things which only highlight how little she knows and serves as an indictment of the government education monopoly which produced her, indoctrinated as a full-fledged radical socialist.

By resisting President Trump on the issues of border protection and immigration reform, Pelosi and the Democrats reveal their hypocrisy as evidenced by the many video clips demonstrating their past support of the very positions Trump now offers as part of his border wall deal. A border wall was once perfectly acceptable to Nancy and her Democrat cohorts back in the day, but has now become toxic just because President Trump supports it. Under the Obama administration, Nancy and the Democrats would have jumped at a deal extending the legal status of DACA recipients in exchange for funding a border wall which they were all on record supporting.

Continually pestered, Nancy has a bad habit of eventually letting down her guard in moments of frustration to speak the truth, and she will do so again on the issues of border wall funding and immigration reform. Pelosi will become flustered in some interview attempting to explain her nuanced approach to the issue for the umpteenth time using language which she has not already exhausted only to shift into a moment of truthful clarity to declare that she’s against it because Trump is for it, and what little support she has will evaporate as the White House pounces on her gaffe to endlessly remind Americans that her obstructionism and gridlock are rooted in her hatred of President Trump. For Pelosi, it’s not about the American people, but all about hating Trump.

Congressional Democrats are already demonstrating just how out of touch they are with average Americans by capitalizing on the government shutdown as an excuse to vacation in Puerto Rico while essential government employees are forced to work without pay. And, adding insult to injury, radical socialist Ocasio-Cortez is calling for a 70% tax rate while Muslim Tlaib is calling for the destruction of Israel as she professes support for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and his anti-Semitism. Pelosi’s scheduled junket to the Mideast in which she planned to take advantage of the shopping offered in Turkey was cancelled by President Trump in his restrictions on the use of military aircraft during the government shutdown to the cheers of his supporters as payback for Pelosi’s call to cancel Trump’s State of the Union address.

By calling for the cancellation of the State of the Union address, Pelosi was actually handing Trump a gift in the form of an opportunity to reimagine the stale SOTU address which Americans have taken to avoiding. Trump is now free to reset the SOTU address in the form of a rally filled with screaming supporters, or a solo effort from the White House, or any of myriad ways to deliver his message to the American people in a setting favorable to him. This is a real chance to apply some media showmanship to remind Americans of all the campaign promises he has kept and how he has rolled back the pernicious policies of the Obama administration to jumpstart the economy and reduce unemployment to historically low levels. Such a move could serve to apply additional pressure to the weakening position of Pelosi and her Democrat cohorts on their shutdown intransigence.

Due to their hatred of him, President Trump continues to be underestimated by Pelosi and the Democrats to their detriment and dismay. We should be so lucky that they continue giving vent to their hatred as Americans get a good look at their petulance. Americans recoiled in horror once they realized exactly what the Obama administration meant by hope and change, and they are poised to recoil again at Nancy’s hatred and inability to work with President Trump to move the country forward. President Trump has offered a good deal that demonstrates compromise on both sides while preserving the principles of both sides.

Democrats want DACA protection while conservatives want border protection, and both sides want immigration reform. Trump’s deal covers all of these, but Nancy Pelosi immediately signaled her opposition to anything supported by Trump despite being on record supporting these positions in the past. Conservatives have to be willing to be flexible on the DACA status to have any chance of securing the much more important goals of border wall funding and immigration reform which will provide long term solutions to the problems we’re currently facing on the border. Conservatives at least need to allow Pelosi and Schumer to blow this deal up before weighing in with their opposition which only provides bipartisan cover to Democrats’ opposition.

On a side note, the NFL needs to fire the officials responsible for that horrible call which cost the Saints the NFC Championship! That was just inexcusable!