Yes, he said it.
You know, the part you aren’t supposed to say out loud.
Sometimes, in politics, one Party develops a strategy that eventually leaks out, and the other party makes claims about it, but because nobody in the first Party says anything about it, the press and the public just aren’t supposed to take notice. It’s just not done, and as long as nobody in the first Party says anything, it just keeps on…keeping on.
It’s funny, since…what? You don’t…
Oh! Oooohhhh! Sorry, I thought you’d seen it, I mean…
You know, Trump just the other day…what? Whaddaya mean which one?
Well, crap. I keep forgetting how much the man just talks. Ok, so listen up, and I’ll tell ya.
Remember that thing with the border? You know, the negotiations and all, where the Progressives in Congress were getting pissed with Biden because they felt he was giving up the store? Yeah, that one, almost. It’s the next part I’m talking about. The bill.
The part where after Biden and all noted that the Senate was going to vote on the negotiated bill, and then Trump opened his big yap (yeah, I know, he never closes it, but…) and told the MAGA House members to kill the deal, remember that? Well, the very next words out of his mouth were the part where he was supposed to shut up.
The part where he said he wanted them to kill the bill because he wanted to run on the open border thing in his campaign this year!
Didn’t somebody send him that memo? You know, the one about not admitting to using the border issue as a whipping post against the Democrats.
Look, I’m a Progressive. If given the chance, I’d vote for AOC for President if she qualified in a heartbeat — twice if I could. And no, while I really just wanted the border thing to go away, I wasn’t exactly elated at Biden just giving the GOP everything they wanted in this bill, either.
But it seems that Biden was smarter than the rest of us. I’d bet good money that he saw this coming. Somehow, he either figured that Trump wouldn’t be able to let this go, or he had inside information that Trump wasn’t happy over the negotiations, and he or his advisors put two and two together and got four. But really, this was brilliant.
He waved it in their faces! He gave them every single thing on border control they wanted. Caved in completely. It turns out this was, for Democrats, the perfect storm.
If Trump had not spoken up, then Biden and the Democrats wouldn’t have that “crisis” to deal with any more in an election year. Sure, there would be flak and unhappiness, but Biden could brag about “solving” the border crisis in a way that the GOP could not deny. That would deny the GOP of a major election year talking point they’ve used for going on fifty years now.
And, in fact, if the Dems managed to gain enough control of Congress in this election, they could easily fix the problems with the bill — especially with almost a year of experience demonstrating the issues at the border as a result. (And believe me, there would be issues!)
But, since Trump did speak up, from now until the election, any time Trump or any Republican says Jack Shit about the border, all the Dems have to do is wave at Trump and say, well, HE killed it, not us.
Boom.
In one swell foop, Biden has emasculated the GOP on the border issue.
There is no way any Republican, even Trump, can even mention the border “crisis” in passing without some Democrat waving a hand at Trump for killing the bill so he could campaign on it. It’s dead. Either they shut up about it, or keep on making themselves look like idiots for getting caught between Biden and Trump. There’s no middle ground.
Now, sure, Johnson could cave in and tell Trump to go pound sand and let the bill pass. There’s no way the MAGA crowd could kill it with Democrats voting in favor of it combined with moderate Republicans. But that would still kill the border issue for them as a whipping post to tie the Democrats to. The most they could do is to claim some kind of combined success for “solving” the crisis. But we all know that Johnson hasn’t enough backbone to stand up to Trump that way.
So this sets them up for getting the clear blame when next term, the Democrats can write up a new bill fixing the issues that we all know will pop up in the next year. Issues they’ll get blamed for, and rightfully so.
So, they’ve managed to screw themselves.
Again.
