The Democratic and Republican positions on the wall and the shutdown seem utterly intractable, but Steve sees a light at the end of a tunnel.
Donald Trump is an inverted Midas: everything he touches
turns to crap.
It can be banal. Like inviting the NCAA College Football
Champions to the White House and demeaning their stature by serving them heaping
piles of junk food.
It can be significant. A good example here would be the
reputation of the United States of America.
It can be the routine ruination of infirm souls who stray
into his orbit. Michael Cohen, Sean Spicer, Rudy Giuliani… the full list would
take years. As we watch the loopy, bug-eyed Giuliani shill for the President,
we may forget that he was selected Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 2001,
with the cover story’s headline trumpeting New York’s Mayor as a “Tower of
Strength.” Now he has all the tensile might of Gumby on ice skates.
Rudy has spent too much time in the radioactive zone that
emanates from Donald Trump’s odd orange glow, and the effect on his brain,
spine, and impulse control has been catastrophic. Giuliani seems to have found
renewed zest for life in pimping for Trump, hurling himself into the media
maelstrom of each new controversy, determined to justify Trump’s actions while
assiduously eschewing logic or factual support. Rudy fills one hole by digging
another, impervious to the possibility that his explanations are more damaging
than the original allegation.
At this point, you’d expect that if rumors were to emerge
that Mueller’s team actually has a copy of a “golden showers” video tape that
Christopher Steel alleged to exist in his famous “dossier,” Rudy would careen
down to CNN headquarters and get into a high testosterone shouting match with Chris
Cuomo, ranting, “Now, Chris, I have not seen the tape, but heaven’s sake,
Chris, watching a Russian prostitute urinate on your bed is not a crime! It’s not collusion, Chris! And collusion isn’t even a crime, Chris! So if some Russian
prostitute urinated on some bed in Moscow, Chris, I can’t imagine why it is
even relevant to anything at all!”
Such an exchange would of course only serve to convince
America that the tape must exist. It must be real. Hiring
Rudy Giuliani for damage control is like vacuuming your carpet with a
fertilizer spreader.
And yet, somehow, through it all, Rudy Giuliani has now
somehow emerged as the most visible spokesperson for the Party of Trump, other
than the Big Stupid Orange himself. Mitch McConnell has opted to spend the
duration of the shutdown in the witness protection program, and we all miss
Sarah Huckabee Sanders performing her “Ursula the Sea Witch” impression at the
now once-a-month daily White House press briefings. When did she disappear, and
why?
Most Republicans are content to parrot White House talking
points about the shutdown and the Mueller probe, hoping their commentary is as
limp and non-controversial as ranch dressing, all to the goal of keeping them
out of the A bloc.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi isn’t even breaking a sweat to
flummox the Lummox-in-Chief. For starters, she realizes that Trump’s tiny head
is in an internecine vise within his party, and she is letting those competing
forces do her heavy lifting. Trump cannot retreat from his $5.7 billion demand
for a border wall without triggering a ghostly visitation from the terrifying Coultergeist, the right wing fanatics
who will deal Trump a full-on Lorena Bobbitt if he flinches. Trump has now
learned that his fallback plan – to declare a national emergency in order to
commandeer funds for his wall from other government budget lines – scared the
crap out of the Freedom Caucus, whose members quickly realized that
establishing such a precedent could embolden a future Democratic President to
declare a national emergency for sweeping action on climate change. Finally, Trump’s belief that he can wait out
the Democrats on the shutdown is perilously flawed, as public opinion is
overwhelmingly placing the blame for the shutdown on Trump.
Most significant, though, are two simple facts. The
shutdown is an ongoing saga, and it
is being felt very significantly by people in Trump’s base.
Consider the first point: as horrific as most of Trump’s outrages
have been, they have been episodic rather than protracted events, here today,
and largely gone tomorrow. Whether it was “shithole countries,” “blame on both sides,”
or the appeasement in Helsinki, Trump’s disasters do not linger for days and
weeks. They are usually blown off the front pages by the fresh outrages of the
next news cycle, often of Trump’s own creation and many seemingly concocted for
the very purpose of alleviating yesterday’s rotting stench.
The shutdown is
different. Its impact is sustained and cumulative. It is the story that keeps coming back, night
after night.
This, in turn, is where the second fact comes into play. In
the past, Trump has displayed a savvy for making policy decisions that wreak
havoc in blue states while padding pockets in Red States. For example, his tax
plan famously gutted real estates tax benefits which hurt property values in
the Northeast. It appears, however, that no such Machiavellian forethought was
given to the impact that a government shutdown would have. Now, Trump is
finding that four of the ten states most adversely affected by the shutdown are
traditional red states like West Virginia, Mississippi, Arizona, and Alabama.
It’s one thing to live in West Virginia and scream lustily
as the candidate promises to build a wall thousands of miles away that Mexico
will pay for. Quite another to watch that nice young family down the
street struggle to pay bills and feed
their children because the government paychecks have been cut off.
Thirty-three days into this self-inflicted quagmire, Trump
has allowed the wet concrete around his ankles to harden into unmovable blocks. There appears to
be no way out. The Democrats won’t give him a wall. Ann Coulter won’t let him
survive without one. The “national emergency” Hail Mary is dead. The public
blames him for the shutdown. And every day it drags on, it drags Trump down
some, and Republicans with him.
Nancy Pelosi is just standing back and allowing the
Republicans to absorb the increasingly uncomfortable data that shows where the
public stands on the blame game. Cancelling the State of the Union? Just a
shrewd move by a real pro: Pelosi just wanted to deny Trump the opportunity to
go on network television and blame the Democrats for his shutdown. She is five
moves ahead before Trump has tuned into his morning strategy download from Fox
and Friends.
If this is all just a game of chicken, Nancy Pelosi does
not look particularly scared.
It all raises a very simple and relevant question for Republicans: when you
find yourself stuck behind a gigantic wall, what do you do?
Do you sit there and just hope it goes away?
Do you hope somebody else comes and removes it?
Or do you just do nothing, and allow it to defeat you?
United States Border Patrol officials will give you an
answer.
People in the former East Berlin will give you a similar one.
People who need to get through a wall find a way.
Smuggling, ladders, helicopters, chisels, hammers, passion,
commitment, and tunnels.
Hey, Republicans… perhaps it is time for Congressional
Republicans to stop parroting the talking points of a White House that is now
living in a permanent state of denial. Time for Republicans to rethink going
back to the bar for another glass of Kool-Aid.
No, don’t worry… I am not asking you to take the incredible
risk of publicly breaking with your President and inviting a right wing whack-job to primary you.
No, I am suggesting something different.
Go underground.
Beat the wall by building a tunnel.
Sneak over and meet with Democrats.
Tell them you need to figure out how to extricate the President from the dead-end end-game that is endangering the economic viability
and health of hundreds of thousands of government workers and the secondary
businesses that depend on them.
Horse-trade with them. Give them something they want and
then, yes, beg for something you need. Perhaps you phrase it as begging for
something the country needs.
Do what legislators are supposed to do.
Make a deal.
Have McConnell bring it to the President, gift wrapped with
the absolute certainty of a veto-override.
Then tell McConnell to instruct the President to go ahead
and veto it, so he can save face and claim that he never caved in.
Override the veto. You will make Trump a happy man. It will re-open the government, give Trump someone to blame for the lack of wall funding, and keep him in Ann Coulter's good graces. Trust me: Trump would dramatically prefer the
embarrassment of the veto override to an humiliating capitulation of Nancy Pelosi. He'd rather take friendly fire.
It will work. More important, it will get the government
working again.
It might even change your outlook on your job. If you encounter more stupid walls from this president, you'll know what to do.
Build more tunnels.
Get the Congress working again. The way it is supposed to.
Make deals.
Because you know what, Republicans?
We understand that you are terrified of taking public
stands against Trump. But we also have heard far, far too many anecdotal
stories of Republicans privately venting their conviction that the President is an ignorant, childish,
boorish, incompetent, and utterly self-centered child.
Fine.
Form an underground. Do your dirty work out of sight.
Build some tunnels.
They can be incredibly effective when you have to get through
a big, stupid wall.
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