GOP shows it wants chaos, not solutions
The apparent collapse in Congress of a bipartisan agreement on America’s southern border has exposed two glaring truths regarding today’s Republican Party:
One, despite all the apocalyptic rhetoric from congressional Republicans, the party does not actually want to solve the border crisis — at least not while a solution could be politically advantageous to a Democratic president.
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And two, the central driver of this and so much other dangerous dysfunction on the political right — former President Donald Trump — has become the Republican establishment he once challenged. His wish is his party’s command, no matter how detrimental to the country.
The GOP, at Trump’s explicit direction, is intentionally sabotaging a border deal it would otherwise embrace just because it doesn’t want constructive progress on President Joe Biden’s most vulnerable issue.
That’s not some kind of opposition talking point; Trump and his key allies aren’t even hiding it.
“A Border Deal now would be another Gift to the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump declared in a statement late last week. “They need it politically.”
The message was clear to Trump enablers like Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. He told CNN before the terms of the deal were even announced that congressional Republicans would “take their lead” from Trump, noted that Trump is “in a campaign” against Biden — and that “if Joe Biden suddenly got religion and supported a border deal that actually reduced the flow of illegal immigration, that would be good for (Biden) politically.”
Meaning, Republicans must oppose it for Trump’s sake.
Indeed, after weeks of holding military aid to Ukraine and Israel hostage to demands for increased border security, congressional Republicans last week were apparently flummoxed by Biden’s remarkable about-face, in which he declared he is ready to “shut down the border right now.”
The proposed bipartisan deal contained almost nothing that Democrats have demanded, not even a path to citizenship for immigrants brought here as children. It would make gaining asylum more difficult even for those who enter the country legally and would completely shut down the asylum process during high-activity periods on the border.
As the GOP’s top Senate Republican negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., put it, the agreement “is a shutdown of the border and everyone actually gets turned around.” In essence, the deal is a complete capitulation by Biden on border issues.
Yet congressional Republicans, buckling to Trump’s utterly self-serving opposition, suddenly refuse to take “yes” for an answer.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has declared the agreement dead on arrival in his chamber. Lankford earned a resolution of condemnation from his home state’s GOP for the apparently high crime of working across the aisle for a solution on an issue Republicans earnestly pretend to care about.
“Pretend,” it turns out, is the key word there. As even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board put it recently, Biden can now claim “with cause” that Republicans “want border chaos as an election issue rather than solving the problem.”
Make no mistake: The GOP, in cowering fealty to Trump, has now confirmed it would rather burden America by continuing that chaos than to allow Biden even a shared victory on the issue.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board/TNS
