By Larry Wiwi for the Franklin County Tea Party
I won’t spend time here defending the wall, border security or the need to end illegal immigration as we have covered those topics thoroughly before and frankly the need is obvious to most Americans. Instead it might be insightful to point out what no one is talking about and that is the answer to the question, exactly who’s fault is it that we are having this showdown and related shutdown now?
It is clearly not President Trump’s fault since he is the newcomer here trying to deliver promises he made in the campaign just a couple years ago. Broadly speaking it is the fault of the professional political class of which Pelosi, Schumer, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas and many others are part of and failed to resolve over many decades.
However, the current showdown is clearly the fault of the last Republican controlled congress. It is the fault of former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and other prominent Republicans like the late John McCain and former Senator Flake. The Republicans by and large ran on ending Obama Care and enhanced border security and they delivered on neither, which was a spectacular failure of leadership and incredibly deceitful to the voters who elected them. The Republicans should have had both bills, border wall funding and Obama Care repeal ready for Trump’s signature by February 2017, but instead we have this self-induced political theatre.
Contrary to conventional thinking, the Democrats did not really win the House in the recent mid-terms as much as the Republicans lost it and the proof is pretty simple: Incumbents win re-election about 80% of the time in the House and if 40 Republicans would not have retired, the Republicans would likely have kept 32 seats and control of the House. The Republicans are likely to blame for the current stand-off because they gave up the House.
Finally, after losing the House, the Republicans still had about 6 weeks to jam through the wall funding and Obama Care repeal and for the third time, they delivered failure. None of this suggests that the behavior of Pelosi and Schumer is acceptable – their behavior is despicable but expected and because it was to be expected, the Republicans needed to act and get it done.
Over the next few weeks or months we will likely finally make progress in getting the wall and border security we have needed for decades, and it will be to Trump’s credit, no thanks to either the Republican leadership or the Democrats.