Shutdown and Out- The Finger of Blame

Well it didn’t take quite a year in Donald Trump’s presidency (a few hours shy of his first year, to be precise) for Democrats to force a shutdown of the government, just to make a point that, in the final analysis, is oh-so pointless.

Republicans, who are always so-so willing to make accommodations to their…ahem…“friends across the aisle,” ended up giving concessions to everything that Democrats wanted: six-year continued funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP), a delay in some of the taxes associated with ObamaCare, continued funding for a host of programs largely supported by Democrats, etc. The continuing resolution, offered by Republicans and passed in the House with even some Democrat support to avert a government shutdown, actually contained no language to which a single Democrat objected. Yet, even then, the Chuck Schumer (D-NY) led Democrat caucus couldn’t resist the opportunity to point fingers at Republicans, and stick a finger in the eye of the president.

After all, Democrats are seething mad at this point.

Having failed up until now to prove Trump/Russia collusion, having failed to block the Supreme Court appointment of Neil Gorsuch, having failed to block passage of the most sweeping tax reform bill in four decades, and having failed to keep the Trump administration from killing the unpopular individual mandate in ObamaCare, the Democrats are desperate. They just can’t seem to get the public to agree with much of the mainstream media that Donald Trump is mentally unfit for office, or that he is a racist, or that he is a misogynist sexist beast of a man who hates women, so they had to do something!

Force a government shutdown via filibuster in the hopes that Republicans in general, and President Donald J. Trump, specifically, will get the blame for the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. that is a government shutdown. After all, don’t Republicans always get the blame for shutting down the government? What’s changed?

As a matter of fact, only one thing has changed with regards to such proceedings.

Unlike the oh-so-gentlemanly, go-along-with, get-along-with, don’t rock-the-boat and try-not-to-be-offensive mainstream, moderate Republicans of old, who lacked the spine to fight back against Democrat demagoguery, the G.O.P. is now led by an in-your-face, no-holds-barred, street-fighter of a president who has the “cajones” to call a spade a spade, and single-handedly fight back against the coalition “government,” consisting of Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, deep-state apparatchiks permeated throughout the federal government, and the mainstream media. The fact of the matter is that Republicans, real Republicans, finally have a leader worthy of the term, who isn’t going to lay down and play possum while Democrats roll over them with the same-old, same-old tactics of yesteryear. Republicans can win the argument over Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, if only they will follow their leader in the White House, and not backslide into their viscous and vacillating ways of days gone past.

Even though five Democrats in the Senate, mindful that their 2018 re-election is up for grabs in states which heavily voted for Trump in 2016, sided with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and supported the continuing resolution to avert a shutdown, there were enough anti-Trump Republicans in the Senate, like Mike Lee (R-UT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Rand Paul (R-KY), and no-shows like Thad Cochran (R-MS) and the notorious anti-Trump John McCain (R-AZ) to make sure that Trump gets his “come-uppance.” These Republican rattlesnakes prove that, in the two thousand years since Julius Caesar was stabbed in back at the hands of Roman senators, not much has changed in the grand scheme of things.

The Senate is where great legislation dies a thousand deaths, after all, and their own “shutdown” would benefit us all, but wishful thinking is not going to bring a sense of sanity back to Washington, if such a sense ever existed there in the first place.

If “stupi-cidal” (combination of stupid and suicidal) Republicans, like Lindsay Graham and company, can keep their pie-holes shut long enough, and allow the Republican president to take the lead in messaging this shutdown as “the Schumer Shutdown,” as it truly is, then the finger pointed by the Senate Minority Leader from New York will land squarely in the reflection of his own mirror.

They just need to grow a spine and get past the excesses of their own egos. Otherwise, it is they who will be shut down and out by the Schumer Shutdown.

-Drew Nickell, 20 January 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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