To Wall, or Not to Wall…THAT is the Question…
Take all of the visceral hatred of President Donald Trump by Democrats, and all of the still-middling vacillation of those who were once NeverTrump Republicans, and all of the “go for it” adulation of the President coming from his base, remove all of this from debate between two parties, the central and defining issue facing Congress is whether or not to build a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico.
Building the wall was also the central and defining platform of the President’s 2016 Campaign, and the House of Representatives’ refusal to take up the issue of wall funding under Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), whose opposition to the wall itself- though not much talked about, has nevertheless resulted into Republicans now having to try to do so from minority status. They could still pass a funding bill before the Democrats take over in January, but they won’t largely because Ryan won’t budge on his stubborn refusal to allow such a vote. So much for so-called Republican leadership…small wonder they lost the House.
Earlier this week, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sat down with the President and Vice President Mike Pence for a brief press gaggle before meeting in private. The border wall was brought up in conversation before live television coverage, and the President insisted on border wall funding before signing off on any budget going forward. The two Democrat leaders repeatedly insisted that any such discussions should be off-camera and in private. Trump once again showed his mastery of pinning down his opposition, said that speaking about it in front of the cameras is all about transparency, asking the two leaders whether or not they were in favor of transparency. After repeated reminders by Schumer of Trump’s oft-stated intent to allow a government shutdown, if that is what it takes to secure border wall funding. Trump even offered to “take the mantle” of such a shutdown, reminding the New York senator of his own disastrous attempt to shut down the government over the same issue, earlier this year.
Why Vice President Pence was there in the first place still remains a mystery. Throughout the entire affair, Pence remained in a mannequin-like frozen pose, staring down at a fixed spot without expression…too weird for prime time.
As an issue itself shutting down the government is the last thing Democrat supporters ever want to see happen as they are all about government, everywhere, every time and in everything. Yet, shutting down the government presents no such problems for Trump’s base of support and other conservative voters who view a brief government shutdown with smiling approval.
The other reason for Trump’s insistence on securing border wall funding now is that it may never come up for a floor vote under Speaker Pelosi once she takes the Speaker’s gavel. Two more years is way too long for a President who is determined to construct a wall that will fix the problem of illegal entry, in those areas unpatrolled by border agents.
Democrats are being duplicitous in their offer of $1.8 billion for border security- a vague reference to border-related issues excluding any such funding for any wall- aside from other border alternatives that don’t work. Remember that it was Senate Democrats who universally backed Senator Diane Feinstein’s (D-CA) bill, which would have proscribed any alien arrest within a hundred miles of the U.S. border and essentially creating an open border for all to enter.
If that is their idea of appropriate border security, then Trump is the only obstacle standing in the way of such a horrifying scenario- a scenario a majority of Americans would never wish to abide. Trump’s insistence on building the wall by any means necessary, military or otherwise, may be the only way our border will ever be secured. While Democrats insist that building a wall would do nothing to secure the border and would therefore constitute a spendthrift attempt to preserve Trump’s political promise, the reality of walling off a border suggests otherwise. When Israel finally took the step of building a wall along its 440-mile-long border with the West Bank, terrorist attacks from Palestinians in the West Bank fell seven-fold, and illegal border breaches virtually disappeared-all proving that border walls do in fact, work.
So, casting aside all of the issues surrounding the Trump presidency itself, it all comes down to simply this…
…to build a wall, or not to build a wall…that is the question.
-Drew Nickell, 15 December 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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