Following Up: Sign the Deal – then Seize the Border Security Initiative

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border security, border wall, Congress, crime, criminal aliens, Defense Department, Democrats, detention, Following Up, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, national emergency, shutdown, Trump

From what’s known of it, I’m as angry about the border security deal reached last night by Congressional negotiators to avert a new partial federal government shutdown as much as any immigration realist and/or supporter of President Trump. Even so, I would urge the President to sign it. (If he can win a few small improvements over the next day or two, as he’s just suggested he’ll seek, fine – but nothing achievable is worth sinking the agreement.) Then I’d recommend that he move to keep his promise that “we’ll be building the wall anyway” by using statutory authority to use Defense Department and other federal assets and resources to engage in barrier construction and secure the border in various other ways. In addition, the Trump administration should redouble efforts to keep his opponents on the defensive politically by shining the spotlight even more brightly on border security gaps left wide open by deal provisions they’ve insisted on.

I know that in yesterday’s post I argued that the Congressional Democrats, who have increasingly made clear their desire to gut meaningful border security completely, would both own a new shutdown morally (in terms of responsibility for government workers and contractors temporarily denied paychecks) and possibly pay a heavy price politically. The trouble is, that contention assumed that the Democrats’ latest cynical gambit, a new, goalpost-moving demand to shrivel (further) the federal government’s ability to detain apprehended illegal aliens – including surging numbers of border crossers – until their status hearings are held, would prevent the negotiators from reaching any agreement.

Consequently, any number of such aliens, including convicted criminals, would be released into American society, with little reason to believe many of them would risk a deportation decision (which would not be first for many). The result, as I wrote yesterday, would be a big victory for the Democrats’ principal goal of maximizing the number of migrants who can set foot on American soil to begin with, who consequently could avail themselves of the full range of legal due process protections to which everyone within U.S. territory is entitled, who would be released before their status hearings, and who would be scot-free to live and work in the United States until the Open Borders crowd could implement yet another amnesty.

Instead, the negotiators came to a conclusion that they, at least – if not necessarily many in their respective parties – could accept. There’s no denying that its threadbare reported barrier appropriation figure ($1.375 billion) would leave the current border security situation just about as unacceptable as it is today. So would the reported new quota on detention beds, which represent a big part of Washington’s ability to ensure that individuals arrested for immigration-law and related transgressions show up for hearings.

Final judgment should be withheld until the official text of the deal is released – especially on the beds issue. But some of the worst possible outcomes – from an immigration realist perspective – appear to have been avoided. In particular, although previous votes by Democrats so far haven’t been enough to prevent closet Open Borders supporters like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from declaring walls to be “immoral,” the new agreement will make this childish position more difficult than ever to take. In addition, the current number of border detention beds is being cut, but not, it seems, by nearly as much as the Democrats recently sought, and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency apparently will retain flexibility in their location.

Further, as its spokespeople have insisted, there’s a strong argument that President has ample legal authority to build and strengthen more in the way of barriers than the deal approves – even without taking the highly controversial step of declaring a national emergency. For example, as noted by one of my Twitter followers (“TruthHunterMan”), in a variety of circumstances, federal law states that “The Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime of any other department or agency of the Federal Government or of any State, local, tribal, or foreign law enforcement agency.”

Moreover, this statute specifies that one of the purposes for which this assistance may be provided include “the transportation of supplies and equipment, for the purpose of facilitating counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime within or outside the United States” and, more specifically, “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

In addition, as stated by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, “We will take as much money as you can give us and then we will go find money someplace else legally in order to secure that southern barrier.” So let the search intensify.

Finally, the Trump administration has done a fair job of publicizing the dangers to public safety posed by inadequate border security, but much more is possible. For instance, couldn’t the administration vividly illustrate how limits on detention are forcing the release of dangerous aliens by publishing on a regular basis the names of these individuals and the charges against them? And maybe some mass releases could be conducted regularly, too – with officials reading this information to broadcast news audiences as the migrants in question are set free? That would sure be Must-See TV. 

This strategy would have the added virtues of freeing federal workers – especially low-wage workers employed both directly and indirectly through contractors – of the threat of real economic hardship; of avoiding the forced labor situation that results from requiring essential workers to report to their jobs even if their departments aren’t funded; and of ensuring that the quality of vital services like air traffic control and Department of Homeland Security missions including Coast Guard patrols isn’t dangerously degraded.

Even passage of the latest full Trump proposal wouldn’t have strengthened border security much in the near future. So signing the Congressional compromise clearly wouldn’t produce a fatal setback. The main challenge now before the President is to flip as much of the script as he can, and capitalize on all the opportunities before him to secure as much of the border as America can ASAP.

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Im-Politic: Why Democrats Will Own a Second Shutdown

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barriers, border security, border wall, Congress, crime, Democrats, detention, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Open Borders, Trump

With Congressional negotiators still racing to reach a deal, it’s unclear whether or not they’ll be able to reach the immigration and border security policy compromise needed to avoid the second partial federal government shutdown in two months. What’s completely clear, however, is that although President Trump declared that he “owned” the first shutdown, Congressional Democrats will deserve the blame this time.

The reason? In recent days, they’ve removed any doubt that their position has nothing to do with their stated belief that border walls are “immoral,” or even that President Trump’s focus on new barriers of any kind is hopelessly out of date. Instead, these Democrats – or at least their leaders – have now disclosed that their real price is a big step toward gutting any meaningful enforcement of immigration law.

Skeptics obviously haven’t paid attention to the course of Congressional negotiations since Friday. At that point, both Republicans and Democrats were expressing guarded optimism that a deal was in sight that involved keeping the entire federal government open in exchange for including actual funding (i.e., appropriations), for more barriers in the Department or Homeland Security (DHS) budget for the current fiscal year – not the kind of unenforceable promise to authorize certain levels of spending over the course of man years that marked previous recent efforts to keep the whole government open.

Hopes for a deal aren’t dead yet, but over the weekend, the Democrats dealt them a major setback by moving the goalposts. Their major new demand was for an unrealistically low (given the great recent increase in would-be border crossers of all kinds) limit in the number of beds maintained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to detain individuals arrested for violations of immigration law.

Congressional Democrats described their stance as an effort to impose sanity on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities. In the words of California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, “A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing to our country.”

But no one can seriously doubt that crippling immigration enforcement is the real objective. In the first place, although it’s tempting – at least for argument’s sake – the critics’ charges that the Trump enforcement dragnet is too broad, let’s not forget that a key demand of many Democrats in recent months has not been to reform ICE practices, but to abolish the agency.

Second, there’s every reason to view the Democrats’ definition of “criminals” and “real security threats” as far too narrow. For example, many U.S. illegal aliens who hold a job are committing identity fraud in one form or another – including theft of Social Security cards. Critics of strict enforcement of immigration law tend to belittle these violations, and if you agree, that’s your right – but please spare me your complaints the next time you’re victimized by identity theft, or  become upset that constantly rising Social Security outlays are fueling the national debt.

Moreover, closet Open Borders supporters have a long record of defining down below the “serious” level many crimes that physically harm or endanger individuals – including assault, battery, sex offenses, drunk driving, and gun-related crimes.

And these coddlers of illegal alien crimes aren’t restricted to the Mainstream Media. In Montgomery County, Maryland – a suburb of Washington, D.C. – lawmakers introduced a measure to provide taxpayer-funded legal aid to illegal aliens that originally would have extended such assistance to illegals convicted of offenses such as “fraud, distribution of heroin, second- and third-degree burglary and obstruction of justice….” And let’s not forget the indulgent attitudes and practice of the nation’s many sanctuary jurisdictions.

What the Democrats pushing for fewer beds really want is a de facto (at least at first) U.S. immigration policy that prioritizes maximizing the numbers of foreign migrants able to set foot on U.S. soil, to thereby avail themselves of the wide range of due process protections afforded to anyone within this country’s territorial limits, and to then be released shortly after their initial apprehension.

As a result, these migrants – including declared asylum seekers and would-be refugees – will be completely free to skip their scheduled status hearings, and to become eligible for whatever future amnesties the Open Borders crowd has in mind once it regains enough power in Washington.

Of course, it’s one thing to make the case on the merits that the Democrats will own this shutdown. It’s another entirely for Mr. Trump to convince the public. Making this sale could represent his biggest challenge yet as President.

Im-Politic: Shutdown Lessons – So Far

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border security, border wall, China, Congress, Democrats, E-Verify, election 2020, establishment Republicans, government shutdown, illegal alien crime, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, North Korea, Paul Ryan, Populism, Russia-Gate, shutdown, Swamp, Trade, Trump

Since the fight isn’t over by a long shot, it’s chancy at best to try to figure out many of the biggest implications of President Trump’s decision to reopen the shut down parts of the federal government despite getting no new funding for a Border Wall or any new physical barriers aimed at strengthening border security. Still, here’s what looks reasonably clear at this stage of the struggle:

>First and foremost, the shutdown situation, context, and therefore even the verdict were set in stone more than two years ago by the Russia collusion/election cheating charges, by the opposition (mainly passive) to President Trump’s immigration agenda of the establishment Republicans still so prominent in Congress (and not just in its leadership) during the Trump administration’s first two years, and the resulting politics of impeachment.

That is, as I’ve written previously, from his first day in office, Mr. Trump needed to secure the protection of Congressional Republicans – including their establishment ranks. Therefore, he needed to prioritize their top issues, like Obamacare repeal and a tax cut heavily weighted toward business, rather than his top – populist – issues, like fixing America’s broken trade and immigration policies.

It’s true that in his second year, the President has ramped up the pressure on leading trade predator China and on other mercantile economies (with his steel and aluminum tariffs). But unlike the Border Wall, those measures didn’t require Congressional funding, or any form of approval from Capitol Hill. (The new trade deal with Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement seems to be moderate enough to at least have attracted mild endorsements from the Big Business-run Offshoring Lobby.)

And if establishment Congressional Republican leaders like former House Speaker Paul Ryan and current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell weren’t going to go the mat for the Wall (which of course would also have required helping to persuade some moderate Democrats to come along as well) when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, there was absolutely no way Mr. Trump could have generated Wall funding once the Democrats gained control of the House.

Incidentally, it’s being reported by at least one non-anonymous source with first-hand knowledge that the President himself provided some confirmation for this argument – by blaming Ryan for “having ‘screwed him’ by not securing border wall money when Republicans had the majority….”

>If you’re going to shut down the government, and especially if you’re planning to dig in your heels for the duration, shut down the right agencies. For example, if the issues are illegal immigration and law enforcement, don’t shut down the Department of Homeland Security – which is chiefly responsible for protecting the nation’s security in these areas. If you’re a Republican, don’t shut down the Agriculture Department, whose rural constituency is overwhelmingly Republican and conservative, and which was already unhappy enough with the President about China trade policies that had pretty much shut down America’s immense soybean exports to the People’s Republic. Also if you’re a Republican don’t shutdown the Federal Aviation Administration – because victims are especially likely to be businessmen and women and other relatively affluent voters – who provide lots of actual and gettable Republican votes.

>Consequently, the politics of shutdowns, and of some aspects of political populism, are becoming clearer than ever – especially if they’re long ones. And many of these should have been obvious from the start.

Most obvious, voters of all kinds – populists and non-populists alike – who are receptive to anti-government arguments get a lot less anti-government when the affected services affect them directly.

Less obvious, populist voters themselves say and act happy to see populist politicians act like disrupters when it comes to the mutually supportive networks of corruption and propaganda set up by establishment politicians, lobbyists, consultants, think tank hacks, and mainstream media journalists in the Washington, D.C. Swamp The same goes for establishment policies they believe have brought them nothing but trouble, like mass immigration, offshoring-friendly trade deals, and pipe dream foreign wars and similar ventures.

What they don’t want disrupted is the steady stream of government services that make their lives easier – and even viable in the first place.

>For reasons like the above, it’s unimaginable that Mr. Trump will follow through with his threat to shut down the government again if he can’t persuade Democrats to compromise acceptably on Wall funding. His best hope for some kind of partial win is to portray himself as the reasonable party, and the Democrats as the arrogant, rigid extremists.

>In that vein, expect continued, and even more frequent administration activity spotlighting crimes by illegal aliens – especially in the districts and states of key lawmakers. But success is also likely to require claims (which are entirely credible, in my opinion) that illegal aliens steal jobs from native-born Americans and/or drive down their wages, and that the leading victims include minority Americans.

>One particularly effective tactic would be for the administration to push for mandating that businesses use the E-Verify system to prevent illegal aliens out of the national job market. E-Verify is currently being used on a voluntary basis by many companies (not including most Trump-owned companies), and by all accounts is extremely accurate. (That is, it snares virtually no innocents in its electronic net.) But its use so far has been voluntary, meaning that companies that blow it off get legs up on their competition by virtue of easy access to bargain-basement illegal employees.

>Another potentially effective talking point that the administration has strangely ignored: focusing on the sheer numbers of foreigners who’d be likely to swamp U.S. borders – and the country’s asylum system – without more effective physical barriers. The administration and all of its spokespeople and media supporters should keep asking the question of Democrats: How many tens of millions of these would-be immigrants and asylum-seekers can the United States afford to admit?

>If these Trump efforts fail, declaring a national emergency looks like the President’s best bet to reestablish credibility with his base and perhaps with fence-sitting voters and Members of Congress, and even some legislative opponents.

Such a move could also go far toward putting the most politically damaging aspects of this issue behind him. After all, there’s little that opponents can do about such a national emergency declaration other than try to tie it up in the courts. And Mr. Trump could – credibly, in my opinion – respond by using information about illegal aliens crime to accuse them of endangering their countrymen and women’s security. So even if rulings by friendly judges hold up actual Wall construction, Mr. Trump’s political position could benefit.

>The President also could well be tempted to score political points by pressing harder to win some foreign policy victories. A China trade deal and significant progress in limiting the nuclear weapons threat posed by North Korea are the two most obvious candidates, but presidential over-eagerness could seriously undermine major American interests.

I’m most worried about the administration’s dealings with Beijing, given the talk out of China of ending the current trade conflict for the foreseeable future by buying lots more American goods and services. More Chinese imports from the United States would be welcome – no mistake about that. But not if the price is letting Beijing off the hook for its ambitions literally to steal and subsidize its way to global supremacy in key technologies that not so coincidentally have big defense implications.

>Finally, re shutdowns themselves, the policy of requiring furloughed workers to do their jobs without getting paid strikes me as completely unacceptable. In other circumstances like this, at home or abroad, these practices are called “forced labor” or “wage theft.” And they’re rightly condemned. Nearly as bad, these furlough practices help pro-shutdown politicians curry favor with their supporters while mitigating or at least postponing the harm to the public – including those supporters.

In other words, if you’re for a shutdown, make it a real shutdown. For any agency whose funding is cut off, the workers stay home – and the jobs they do don’t get done. If that means chaos ensues and public safety is put at risk, too bad for shutdown-ers. They’ll own it.

>Speaking of owning it, that’s the situation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now finds herself in not only regarding border security but every issue that comes up in national affairs. In particular, when you show you’ve gained enough power to win political battles, you also show that you’ve gained enough power to frustrate initiatives that may be unpopular among your caucus in Congress, or some of your caucus, but that may be popular with everyone else. So forget about the the idea that Pelosi is now free to conduct a campaign of all-encompassing resistance to the Trump agenda, and to dictate terms of those proposals that she is willing to consider.

>And finally, that’s one of the many reasons it’s way too early to predict how the shutdown fight will impact the next presidential election. The main additional reasons: There’s still a long ways to go before that campaign achieves critical mass, and any number of events could turn the political calculus upside down. And similarly, it’s glaringly obvious that the Trump era news cycle – along with the national attention span – is already the shortest in recent memory – and could well keep getting shorter.

Im-Politic: Never Trump-er Democrat Can’t See the Walls in Front of His Face

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border wall, Capitol Hill, Capitol Police, Congress, Democrats, Eric Swalwell, Im-Politic, Immigration, Trump, U.S. Capitol

Even in a Congress full of Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers, California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell rose head and shoulders above the rest of these political Section 8-ers yesterday with a tweet about President Trump’s proposed Border Wall.

Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and possible 2020 presidential candidate , is best known for his efforts to de-legitimize the 2016 presidential election results by hawking charges that President Trump and/or his campaign stole their way to victory by colluding with Russia to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In the process, he’s accused Mr. Trump of “working on behalf of the Russians” while in the Oval Office. And like nearly the entire roster of Democrats in the House and Senate, he’s working overtime to prevent the President from keeping his signature campaign promise on illegal immigration (though lately Swalwell has said he’s OK with “fencing where there are vulnerabilities”).

So evidently in an effort to hold Mr. Trump’s version of physical border barriers up to ridicule, Swalwell yesterday sent the Twitter-verse the following challenge:

“If you’ve been to the U.S. Capitol, close your eyes. Do you remember a wall around it? But do you remember officers guarding it? Cameras? And barriers at vulnerable points? Do you believe our Capitol is at any risk of an invasion? We don’t need a wall, we need smart security.”

But as must be obvious to anyone who has indeed visited the Capitol, Swalwell has missed more than a few critical details. Most fundamentally, as a building, the Capitol actually consists of walls. Moreover, doors don’t exactly abound, few of these are open to the public, and the public entrances are manned by Capitol Police officers who, for good measure, require every prospective visitor to go through a metal detector. The same goes for the nearby House and Senate office buildings.

An that’s not all. Capitol Hill security employs “barricades that block cars from approaching the Capitol and office buildings and snipers positioned on the terraces.” And for years, anchoring the security strategy is a $621 million Capitol Visitor Center through which most visitors to the Capitol building itself must pass. Indeed all told, Congress spent $423 million in 2018 on security for itself and its workplace – a sum that has quadrupled since 1998. And the 2,200 officers and civilians comprising the Capitol Police represent a security contingent larger than the police forces of Atlanta, St. Louis, New Orleans, or Denver.  (See the previous linked Roll Call article for these details.) 

Further, one big reason for this impressive effort is that in 1998, before it reached this scale and form, a gunman forced his way into the Capitol and killed two Capitol Police officers. And a handful of violent incidents since then could have surely been much worse – including a 2013 near-disaster involving a driver who tried to crash her vehicle through barriers near the Capitol and surrounding the White House.

Not that the Trump Border Wall, nor his decision to shut down the government partially by leaving spending legislation for some federal agencies in limbo, are beyond criticism. But Swalwell’s from yesterday is clearly off the wall. And weirdly, he’s served in Congress since the beginning of 2013. Maybe instead of urging his fellow Americans to close their eyes and picture the Capitol of his imagination, he should open his and check out the real thing.

Im-Politic: Another Take on the Shutdown/Border Wall Dispute

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2018 elections, 2020 elections, border security, border wall, Democrats, government shutdown, Im-Politic, Immigration, Trump

It’s obviously not such a Happy New Year for many federal government employees, with the current partial shutdown continuing and no end immediately in sight. What continues to puzzle me is why the Democrats have taken such a hard line – that is, if their substantive and political beliefs about the Border Wall whose funding is at the heart of the dispute are to be taken seriously.

On substance, the Democrats insist on portraying the Wall as at best a grossly inefficient way to improve border security – and certainly much less effective than the “enhanced fencing, technology, drones, satellites, lighting, sensors, cell phone towers” they insist are “the things the experts have clearly indicated would improve our border security.”

Politically, the Democrats say they’re confident that the Wall is unpopular – as made clear by their new proposal to end the impasse. The plan would fully fund most federal agencies through the upcoming September end of the current fiscal year. But it would only the extend through the middle of next month the current appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security (the lead agency on border security) minus any Wall funding.

Although the Democrats’ plan would include money for “fencing,” their strategy clearly assumes that the public values ending at least this episode of Washington dysfunction much more highly than building President Trump’s Wall. Moreover, most polls seem to bear out this analysis. (See in particular here.)  

But it’s at least arguable that if the Democrats do indeed view the Wall as “a 5th century solution to a 21st century problem”, and a political loser to boot, they should approve Mr. Trump’s full $5 billion request. After all, a Wall that won’t work by definition won’t present significant obstacles to greater flows of migrants with whose plight the Democrats ardently sympathize. They could depict themselves as the champions of compromise and reason who were willing to go the extra mile to work with an extremist president in the interests of restoring at least minimal normality to American public life. And the cost to taxpayers would be meager (in federal budget terms).

The Democrats’ acceptance of the President’s proposal would indeed give Mr. Trump a political victory of sorts by enabling him to proclaim that he’s kept a campaign promise. But this victory would only resonate with his base – which by itself isn’t nearly big enough to reelect him.

In this vein, even better for the Democrats: They’re surely confident that time is on their side. First, even if Wall installation began tomorrow, it couldn’t possibly deliver on its restrictionist promise for many months – or, crucially, by the time presidential campaign 2020 is in full swing. So the Democrats’ would have many months’ worth of opportunities to claim somewhat credibly that the Wall is indeed a failure.

Second, they show every sign of believing that in the 2020 elections they’ll regain the political power they’ll need to scrap this project. That’s undoubtedly why so many in the party have expressed an interest in running for president. And the Democrats’ chances of taking control of the Senate, and thus of the entire Congress, look promising, as well – as they’re defending many fewer seats than the Republicans.

All of which brings up some alternative explanations for the Democrats’ shutdown strategy. For example, maybe they’re (and in particular, their genuinely Open Borders-infatuated leaders) are actually afraid that a Wall (in tandem of course with other security measures) will work, at least once it’s finally in place. Maybe they’re so strongly opposed to more physical barriers because these structures will reduce the numbers of migrants who manage to set foot on American soil, and thereby become eligible to be handled by a loophole-filled immigration law and policy framework that ensures many of them will be released into American society – and ultimately freed to add to pressure in key (Democratic) states for ever wider voting rights.

And maybe they’re not so confident about their 2020 chances either for the White House and in the Senate. Maybe they’re consequently counting on showdowns like that over the Wall to bait the President into still more of the kind of harsh-sounding tweets, and especially threats, that unmistakably turn off many 2016 Trump supporters outside his hard core – and who exhibited buyers’ remorse in last year’s midterms. Ditto for supporters of many of their own midterms victors – centrist politicians who didn’t promise to shut down ICE (the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency), and who appear truly concerned with border security.

Maybe the Democrats are simply playing for time and hoping that a prolonged shutdown and./or devastating findings from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will combine to destroy Mr. Trump’s reelection chances whatever chaos emerges at the Border from a continuing failure to enhance security – and even after the government is reopened. And maybe it’s some combination of the above (since a single cause rarely explains major political, social, cultural, or historical developments).

None of these possibilities mean that the Democrats’ shutdown strategy per se will fail. Indeed, the President has already cut his funding request significantly, and shown flexibility on the ludicrously crucial phrasing (“wall,” “fence,” “barrier”) aspects of the issue. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if, because of the above analysis, and particularly of an even greater migrant flood it might bring, a resulting Democratic victory turned out to be Pyrrhic.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The U.S. Public Opinion Gap isn’t Only Partisan

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alliances, America First, climate change, Democrats, globalism, Immigration, Jobs, national security, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Republicans, terrorism, Trump, weapons of mass destruction

A recent (November 29) Pew Research Center poll on public attitudes toward foreign policy issues was a classic good news/bad news story – at least if you believe that the top priority of American foreign policy should be to promote the security and well-being of the American people.

On the one hand, that’s pretty much what the results show – that’s the good news. On the other hand, these commonsense positions prevail overwhelmingly because adults viewing themselves as either Republicans or Republican leaners hold them. That’s the bad news.  In other words, the views of Democrats and those leaning Democratic reveal a marked disregard for their nation’s self-preservation and prosperity.

According to Pew, 72 percent of all Americans say that “taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorism” should “be a top foreign policy priority,” 71 percent would assign the same priority to “protecting jobs of American workers,” and 66 percent regard “preventing the spread” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with similar urgency.

But now check out the partisan splits: On the terrorism issue, fully 84 percent of Republicans and their leaners regard it as a top foreign policy priority. Only 61 percent of Democrats and their leaners agree. So much, i.e., for the idea that Americans will never forget September 11. And remember – the question only described protection from terrorism as a top priority, not the top foreign policy priority.

On protecting American workers’ jobs, 81 percent of Republicans and their leaners would treat it as a priority, versus only 65 percent of Democrats and their leaners. I’m old enough to remember when the Democrat called themselves the party of working Americans.

The exception here is preventing the spread of WMD: Fewer (64 percent of Republicans and their leaners see it as a major priority than do Democrats and their leaners (68 percent), but these results are very close.

Many of the other Pew poll findings are not the slightest bit surprising. Principally, the biggest partisan divides on foreign policy issues come on “dealing with global climate change,” “reducing illegal immigration into the U.S.,” and “maintaining U.S. military advantage over all other countries.”

But here’s what’s more surprising. The Democrats, and especially their leaders, have enthusiastically assumed the mantle of globalism champions versus President Trump’s proclaimed America First approach. And a hallmark of globalism, whether on the right or the left ends of the national political spectrum, has been international activism. Liberals and conservatives generally disagree on where to place the emphasis (e.g., emerging transnational issues like climate change and migration versus more traditional security-oriented issues), but energetic engagement is favored by all.

Nonetheless, if you look carefully at the Pew results, Democrats and their leaners would place the “top priority” label on relatively few foreign policy issues. Indeed, only one such candidate for this status reaches the 70 percent mark with these groups – “improving relationships with allies.” And only four issues are seen as top priorities by 60 or more percent of Democrats and their leaners – as stated above, WMD (68 percent), protecting American jobs (65 percent), climate change (64 percent) and terrorism (61 percent). 

Overall, then, it’s easy to conclude from these and other findings in the Pew poll that Democrats and their leaners may be globalists, but they’re globalists who don’t seem to regard overseas-related challenges with overwhelming concern. Alternatively, they’re reluctant to support zeroing in on a limited (and arguably more manageable) set of goals. P.S., the relatively low score for climate change seems especially noteworthy given the importance progressive Democrats and others relatively far to the Left have attached to the idea of a “Green New Deal.”

It’s even easier to conclude that Republicans and their leaners are more committed to an America First-type approach. And it looks like this commitment is somewhat stronger. Their highest priority foreign policy issues are the aforementioned terrorism and job protection – where their priority scores are in the 80s percent. And their next three priorities are maintaining a national military edge (70 percent), reducing illegal immigration (68 percent), and preventing WMD spread (64 percent). For good measure, “getting other countries to assume more of the costs of maintaining world order” comes in at 56 percent.

However revealing these Pew results, they still left out two of the biggest questions for politicians and others trying to surmise which approaches to U.S. foreign policy, and what specific initiatives, would garner the most and least public support. The first is how genuine political independents view these issues. The second is how high a priority is assigned to preventing a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland.

The importance attached to halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction points to great concern about this challenge. But the strong support expressed by Democrats and their leaners for shoring up America’s alliance relations indicates an especially serious lack of awareness on their part that indiscriminately extending nuclear umbrellas over U.S. allies has greatly increased the odds of such attack (principally from the newish NATO commitments to the highly vulnerable Baltic states, and the longstanding commitment to protect South Korea from North Korea and its new nuclear capabilities).

Of course, these Americans can’t entirely be blamed for this knowledge gap, as both U.S. leaders and the mainstream media continue to work overtime to mask the – growing – nuclear war risks inherent in the nation’s alliance system. (President Trump has been only a partial exception.) Hopefully 2019 will see some explicit, intellectually honest discussion of these dangers – and well before they reach critical mass.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What Does the Public Think of Khashoggi, Trump, and the Saudis?

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Axios.com, Democrats, Harris, independents, Jamal Khashoggi, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, partisanship, Rasmussen, Republicans, sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Survey Monkey, The Hill, Trump

If you follow the news, you know that there are few if any stories bigger Saudi Arabia’s killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a legal U.S. resident, and President Trump’s unwillingness to hold the kingdom’s top leaders accountable – at least according to America’s tightly intertwined national political classes and Mainstream Media.

At the same time, if anything’s clear from recent domestic political trends – especially the rise of populism – it’s that the priorities of these national elites and the general public don’t always coincide. And the polling on this issue makes pretty clear that the Khashoggi killing and the Trump reaction is one of those instances.

The sample size isn’t big (three surveys) and all of them predate Mr. Trump’s full, November 20 explanation of his final decision on Khashoggi and his Saudi policy. But none point to reactions that would even come close to justifying the amount of time and space being devoted to the issue by the political and media kingpins.

Two of the polls came out on October 24. The first, by Rasmussen, found that by a 57 percent to 33 percent margin, “likely U.S. voters” believed that Khashoggi’s (then) “disappearance and suspected murder was “important to U.S. national security. Eleven percent were undecided. Those results don’t exactly indicate the peasants were reaching for their pitchforks. Nor does the fact that 68 percent of those likely voters favored American sanctions on Saudi Arabia if the monarchy’s involvement was “proven.” After all, “sanctions” can encompass a wide range of measures.

That same day, an Axios/Survey Monkey sounding reported that 56 percent of U.S. adults polled considered the President’s “response to Saudi Arabia for the Khashoggi murder” as “not tough enough.” Just under a third viewed it as “about right” and five percent deemed it “too tough.”

Repeating a pattern often found in recent polling, opinion was sharply divided along partisan lines. A much higher share of Democrats (78 percent) than Republicans (37 percent) chose the “not tough enough” answer. Independents fell right in the middle, with “not tough enough” prevailing in their ranks by 55 percent to 32 percent.

Somewhat different results came from a posting in The Hill newspaper from a survey it conducted along with the Harris organization. Their poll found that by a 49 percent to 29 percent margin, “registered voters” favored waiting on anti-Saudi sanctions until after an independent investigation determines if the Saudi Arabian government is responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi” rather than impose such measures beforehand. And 16 percent of respondents said that the United States “should not be involved in the matter.”

Nonetheless, the partisan split story remained intact, with many more Democrats (38 percent) than Republicans (20 percent) favoring “sanctions now” and somewhat more Republicans (57 percent) than Democrats (46 percent) wanting an investigation first. Twenty eight percent of independents supported sanctions before an investigation whereas 45 percent wanted to wait.

In fact, the partisan split results lend some credence to the proposition (believed by yours truly), that views of the Khashoggi murder and the best U.S. response reveal more about Americans’ views of Mr. Trump than anything else. That is, if you generally like the President or his job performance, you’re likely to at least cut him some slack on Saudi policy, and make the point to a pollster; if you don’t, you’re not.

Some more evidence for this belief: In the Hill/Harris poll, independents were significantly more likely (22 percent) than either Republicans (16 percent) or Democrats (11 percent) to back American non-involvement in the Khashoggi affair.

All of this might change when we start getting polls based on research following the President’s big Khashoggi statement – which represented an unusually blunt,  arguably narrow, and arguably cockeyed, version of realpolitik. But overall the strongest reason for concluding that this issue doesn’t – and won’t – mean remotely as much outside elite political and media circles as inside is probably this Axios/Survey Monkey finding: Only four percent of their respondents considered foreign policy “their top issue.” As I’ve repeatedly written, that’s also a leading sign of the public’s superior common sense.

Im-Politic: Will Trump Let Trump be Trump on Issues?

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Congress, conservatism, conservatives, Democrats, deregulation, establishment, Im-Politic, infrastructure, John McCain, Marco Rubio, midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi, Obamacare, Populism, regulation, Republicans, tax cuts, Trade, Trump

Ever since Donald Trump made clear his staying power in presidential politics, his more populist supporters have tried to beat back efforts of more establishment-oriented backers to “normalize” him by insisting that they “Let Trump be Trump.” The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections tell me that the populists’ arguments on substance (as opposed to the President’s penchant for inflammatory and/or vulgar rhetoric) are stronger than ever, but that the obstacles that they’ve faced remain formidable.

The “Let Trump” argument contends that the President’s best hope to attract the most voters has always been his willingness to reject positions that for decades have been conservative and Republican hallmarks, but that have become increasingly unpopular outside the realms of most national GOP office-holders, other Washington, D.C.-based professional Republicans and conservatives, and the donors so largely responsible for their power, influence, and affluence. These maverick Trump positions have included not only trade and immigration; but the role of government and the related issues of entitlements, healthcare, and infrastructure spending; and Wall Street reform.

But since his election, as I’ve argued, Mr. Trump’s willingness to embrace the full maverick agenda has been blunted by his vulnerability on the scandals front. Specifically, he’s seemed so worried about impeachment threats from Democrats that he’s been forced to shore up his support with the conventional Republicans that dominate the party’s ranks in Congress. Why else, I’ve written, would his first two years in office have so prominently featured strong support for right-of-center standbys like major tax and federal discretionary spending cuts; curbs on regulation; repeal of Obamacare; and bigger military budgets, rather than, say a massive push to repair and retool America’s aging or simply outdated transportation, communications, energy, and other networks?

It’s true that Trump remained firmly in (bipartisan) populist mode on trade (notably, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and slapping tariffs on metals imports and many Chinese-made products), and just as firmly in (conservative) populist mode with various administrative measures and proposals to limit and/or transform the makeup of legal immigration – though many of his most ardent backers accuse him of punting on his campaign promise to build a Border Wall.

Yet this Trump populism strongly reflected the views of the Republican base – a development now not lost on conventional conservatives when it comes to immigration, even though they’ve been slow to recognize the big shift among Republican voters against standard free trade policies. By contrast, the President has apparently feared that Congressional Republicans would draw the line on the rest of their traditional agenda – or at least that he could curry favor with them by pushing it.

The midterm results, however, might have brought these political calculations to a turning point. On the one hand, there’s no doubt that most House and Senate Republicans, along with the donors and most of the party’s D.C.-based establishment, are still all-in on their tax, spending, regulatory, and Obamacare positions.

On the other hand, according to the exit polls and other surveys, the tax cuts didn’t even greatly impress Republican voters (let alone independents). And most Americans aren’t willing to risk losing Obamacare benefits they already enjoy (especially coverage for pre-existing medical conditions) by supporting Republican replacement ideas that may be less generous.

The message being sent by all of the above trends and situations is that President Trump may have even more latitude than he’s recognized to cut deals with Democrats. At the same time, the Democrats’ capture of the House of Representatives on Tuesday and signs that they’ll ramp up the scandal investigations could keep preventing him from “being Trump” on such issues and possibly antagonize most Republican lawmakers.

Of course, my political neck isn’t on the line here. But I’d advise Mr. Trump to follow his more unconventional instincts. The Congressional Republicans still uncomfortable with him ideologically must be aware that his personal popularity with GOP supporters has grown significantly since mid-2017, and that this surge owes almost nothing to their own priorities. So if they don’t help staunchly resist any intensified Democratic probes, their political futures could look pretty dicey, too.

One big sign that ever more establishment Republicans are getting “woke” on the obsolescence of much establishment conservatism: the efforts by long-time mainstream conservative/Republican favorites like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to develop a Trump-ian agenda that can survive Mr. Trump’s presidency. Further, resistance in Washington to their efforts is likely to continue weakening, since so many of the President’s ideological opponents on the Republican side are leaving the House and Senate. (And of course, their spiritual leader, veteran Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain recently passed away.)

To be sure, Mr. Trump yesterday (rhetorically, anyway) erected his own obstacle to deal-cutting – his declaration that he won’t be receptive if investigations persist and broaden. House Democratic leader (and still favorite to become Speaker again) Nancy Pelosi has pretty clearly, however, signaled that she herself is not impeachment-obsessed, even if those exit polls say most of the Democratic base is.

As a result, I can’t entirely blame the President for still feeling spooked by the Democrats – at least this week. But what an irony if the most important opponent “letting Trump be Trump-ism” – whose broad popularity could well combine with the advantages of incumbency to outflank the Democrats, win the President a second term, and pave the way for a truly earth-shaking, lasting realignment of American politics – turned out to be President Trump himself.

Im-Politic: The Politics of Kavanaugh

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1968 election, 1972 election, 2018 elections, Democrats, George S. McGovern, Im-Politic, Kavanaugh, midterm elections, protesters, Republicans, Richard M. Nixon, Supreme Court, Trump, Vietnam War

Although Brett Kavanaugh has now won confirmation to the Supreme Court, the fallout will resonate for months – and likely longer (even if he does follow my advice and withdraw between now and his swearing in). So some final (for now) thoughts on this debacle:

Principally, at this point it looks like President Trump’s instincts on the politics of the Kavanaugh nomination were better than mine. I feared that sticking with Kavanaugh would accomplish less in firing up the Trump-Republican base (by now, they’re almost identical) than it would harm the GOP’s chances in numerous upcoming midterm elections by alienating and downright antagonizing moderate Republicans (especially upper middle-class women) and independents (of all genders).

The main evidence that Trump – and Kavanaugh stalwarts – were right politically? Polls showing a closing of the so-called enthusiasm gap for these midterms, between Republicans and Democrats – widely seen as a good predictor of voter turnout –  has narrowed in favor of the Republicans. But there’s a twist here: as stated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this afternoon, the gap closing was mainly a gift from the Democrats, and the die-hard Kavanaugh opponents comprising a big part of their base. That their hysteria and extreme tactics have undoubtedly turned off many voters in the center looks clear from the recent shift in public opinion in support of the Kavanaugh bid. In fact, I have no doubt that videos of the anti-Kavanaugh protests will be a gift that keeps on giving to Republican candidates from now through election day, in the form of countless campaign ads that will feature them.

Come to think of it, I suspect that the Kavanaugh protests have backfired in the way that comparably angry protests unwittingly sabotaged the anti-Vietnam War movement decades ago. This journal article does an excellent job of showing that the polling data from the late-1960s and early 1970s – when U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia expanded dramatically, and dissent became more strident and sometimes violent – can support several different interpretations, no doubt because public opinion was understandably confused by this then-unprecedented type of conflict.

But one legitimate interpretation of the findings is that public opinion would have turned against the war much faster had so many Americans, rightly or wrongly, not found the protests and the protesters themselves to be so offensive in so many ways. Surely that’s why the winner of the 1968 presidential election was not a dove, but Richard M. Nixon. His emphasis of his unhappiness with the Johnson Administration’s supposedly muddled approach to the war and strong suggestion that he would break the emerging stalemate in various (often not mutually consistent) ways closely approximated the views of a critical mass of the public.

And just as surely that’s why (along with dramatically declining casualty rates) Nixon was reelected in a landslide over Democrat George S. McGovern, who Republicans portrayed as the champion of “acid, amnesty [for draft-dodgers], and abortion.”

A “Blue Wave” could still wash over Congress this November, but at this point, it’s also entirely possible that on “the morning after,” the big questions dominating American politics will concern whether the Democrats will recognize their Kavanaugh overreach, and whether they can (or want to) start presenting a more appealing face to the electorate over the next two years.

At the same time, the big qualifier remains fully in tact – whether, between now and then, President Trump will finally cross a line that will convince voters that he and his Republican Congressional and gubernatorial supporters truly are unfit for office, and must be thrown out at the next possible opportunity. But if the President’s many disruptive words and even deeds haven’t produced these results so far, this hope looks like an increasingly slim reed on which to hang political success.

Im-Politic: Why Senate Dems Should be Ashamed…& Kavanaugh Should Go

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Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, Democrats, FBI, Im-Politic, Jeff Flake, Julie Swetnick, Mark Judge, Republicans, Senate Judiciary Committee, sexual assault, Supreme Court, Trump

Thanks to Jeff Flake, I get to write about the Kavanaugh firestorm again well before I wanted to. On Friday, for readers leading hermitic lives, the retiring Arizona Senator and Republican member of the Judiciary Committee announced his conditional decision to support the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The result was Committee approval, but only pending the findings of a week-long FBI probe of one and possibly two of the sexual misconduct charges leveled against the federal judge.

This compromise leaves me more convinced than ever that, as I first posted on September 19, the only solution to the Kavanaugh uproar consistent with American democratic values and procedures is a political solution. In other words, because it will not be possible to determine Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence with a degree of confidence that would satisfy any (remaining!) open-minded observers, a decision needs to be made by Senators with the information they already have at hand – and thereby forcing them to face whatever political consequences result.

At the same time, the weight of the evidence now tells me that, for the good of the country, the least worst of a series of remaining alternatives that are absolutely terrible is that someone other than Kavanaugh fill the Court seat that’s currently open.

Regarding the FBI probe, I have no objection to the kind of short investigation by the Bureau of the Kavanaugh allegations successfully demanded by Senate Democrats. But the the chances of conclusively establishing the decisive facts seem slim at best. For example, it’s not possible to demonstrate Kavanaugh’s innocence versus Christine Blasey Ford’s charges without hard evidence (e.g., a photograph, some contemporaneous restaurant or store receipt) showing Kavanaugh’s location the night of the assault because Ford does not remember which night it was. That’s not a criticism of her; it’s simply a fact that unavoidably complicates such matters.

In principle, Mark Judge, the Kavanaugh friend that Ford claims was the third person in the room during the assault, could change his story and attest to her claims about the judge’s behavior. But simply since such an about-face would expose Judge to legal jeopardy, how plausible is that scenario? Similar problems could face the other party attendees identified by Ford if they changed their varying claims of ignorance of the alleged incident. And even in the absence of prosecution, how credible would such actions leave them in the court of public opinion?

There are two other big potential problems with an FBI investigation – long or short. First, it wouldn’t take place in a vacuum. Interviewees of both Kavanaugh and Ford would have plenty of context – and therefore plenty of incentive to offer claims of all kinds expressly intended to support or discredit either one. And although lying to the FBI is often a criminal act, it doesn’t take an especially active imagination – especially in the current, politically charged atmosphere – to think of many statements that would be impossible to prove or disprove. Nor is it remotely difficult to believe that all manner of Kavanaugh accusers would suddenly emerge, especially since the Bureau accepts anonymous information.

Second, how out of character would it be for Kavanaugh opponents to complain, despite agreeing with the time frame, that it was inadequate after all? That all possible and even likely leads hadn’t been run down? That new witnesses need to appear in public before the full Committee after all? (P.S. – even though Judge has given a sworn statement, since he is the only eyewitness identified by Ford other than Kavanaugh, and as a result is in a class by himself when it comes to her accusations, I believe he should have been subpoenaed last week).

Many Kavanaugh opponents contend that the charges leveled by Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick merit an investigation, too. The former’s lawyer has confirmed that the FBI has contacted his client about her allegation that  Kavanaugh shoved his genitals into her face at an alcohol-drenched gathering both attended as Yale University freshmen. I explained on Wednesday why I regard Ramirez’ case as significantly weaker than Ford’s. 

As for Swetnick, even disregarding new evidence of serious challenges her own credibility would face (see, notably, here and here), the more I think about her story, the less plausible it seems – even though her statement is sworn as well, and exposes her to prosecution if challenged. Principally, it appears profoundly improbable that the kind of regular mass rape activity she depicts could have been kept so secret for so long, especially among the families of affluent DC-area private school students who, as I know from first-hand observation, genuinely do comprise a series of very close-knit communities. Therefore, it’s at least as improbable that Kavanaugh’s involvement would have escaped the FBI’s notice during the background checks it’s conducted in connection with his several government appointments. (By contrast, it is entirely plausible that the type of incident Ford has described could be kept secret. After all, she’s not claiming any repeats, and the number of attendees at that single gathering was much smaller.) 

In fact, partly for that reason, Ford’s case is looking stronger to me all the time. It’s clear to me, anyway, that the Democrats (including her lawyers) are shamefully exploiting her situation. It’s equally clear that they’re playing for time, in hopes that they’ll win back control of the Senate and thus gain the ability to block any Trump judicial nominees of any kind. In particular, it’s clear that the Democrats only decided to leak Ford’s name to the press – and thereby enhance the credibility of her story – only after they became convinced that Kavanaugh was headed for Committee and then Senate approval.

But, as I explained last Saturday, none of those considerations invalidate her claims. Nor, in this vein, can I identify any realistic motive for her to be lying. Even if she’s a fanatic Democrat or progressive, her actions have unmistakably subjected her and her family to the ugliest and most fearful kinds of hounding and harassment – harassment that nowadays could easily turn violent. It’s admittedly possible that she was happy to help an anti-Kavanaugh conspiracy, and “take one for the cause,” by fabricating her tale. ” But I’m glad I don’t have to make that argument.

Moreover, unlike Ramirez, Ford can point to a sworn statement from her husband maintaining that she mentioned Kavanaugh as her assailant back in 2012. One other statement, from a friend, says that this past June, nine days before the announcement of Kavanaugh’s nomination, in response to the friend’s question, she specified Kavanaugh as the federal judge she had initially told him in 2016 had assaulted her in high school. A third friend has stated (also under oath) that Ford told her in 2013 of a high school assault on her by a federal judge, though the judge was not named. (See here for a summary of these statements.) 

If strong evidence refuting or strongly challenging any of this comes out in the next week, or whenever, then clearly I’ll need to rethink my conclusion.

Nonetheless, the actions of many Democrats in this Kavanaugh stink hardly persuade me that justice will have been done if his nomination is defeated – much less that the good of the nation will have been served. Quite the contrary. Their readiness to label him a sexual criminal based simply on Ford’s then-anonymous accusation shows that the bar for such charges has now sunk appallingly low, and that the chances of their success have now become appallingly high. (That’s why I completely sympathize with South Carolina Republican Senator and Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham’s diatribe against his Democratic colleagues.)

Consequently, there is reason for concern that the kinds of individuals that everyone should want in public service will refuse to take the risk of being Kavanaugh-ed. In other words the party has paved the way for successfully weaponizing slander in connection with sexual misconduct. At least as bad, in the process, for the reasons stated above, participating in FBI background checks might be successfully weaponized, too. The ease of libeling the subject has become too great, and the odds of paying the price too meager.

Yesterday, in an effort to balance some of the various competing considerations, I suggested on Twitter that, following the FBI probe (and assuming its failure to shed much more light on the allegations), that the Judiciary Committee and full Senate proceed promptly to votes. Then, and assuming that Kavanaugh won, that he withdraw his name from consideration. This outcome, I hope, might prevent the Supreme Court’s legitimacy from becoming fatally weakened – both because a critical mass of the public will never trust him no matter what; because he’s sadly tarnished his own credibility with too many sworn statements that raise too many consistency questions and might even be perjurious; and because his latest testimony has exposed too much evidence of excessive partisanship.

Yet a Kavanaugh withdrawal will still enable President Trump to exercise his entirely valid Constitutional right to nominate another conservative who shares his judicial philosophy. Indeed, this act of selflessness might bolster a follow-on nominee’s chances of success by shielding him or her in the public eye from especially scurrilous tactics, and possibly curbing some of the Democrats’ mud-slinging instincts. It might also go far toward repairing Kavanaugh’s image.      

But whether this idea is picked up or not, the American political system designates Senators the ultimate arbiters of nominations like Kavanaugh’s. At this point, I see no acceptable way forward other than permitting them to do their jobs – and then trying to figure out how to replace a Supreme Court nomination process that has become irreparably broken.