Loyalty to Trump is dooming border bill
Republicans have shown time and again that they are willing to lose their own souls to gain favor with Donald Trump. So it’s hardly surprising that they are also willing to sacrifice border security and foreign alliances, NATO included.
Remarkably, Republicans are more invested in passing a Trumpian loyalty test than in governing for the general welfare. Cult worship!
A major bipartisan border deal and foreign aid package is on track to fail in the Senate this week as GOP opposition is mounting amid relentless attacks on the deal from former President Donald Trump and top House Republicans. …
Speaker Mike Johnson has already said the border deal would be dead on arrival in the House.
(CNN, February 5, 2024)
This bill is the result of months of intense negotiations. It’s a $118.2 billion legislative package that provides
- enhanced security at the US-Mexico border,
- military aid to Ukraine for its democratic fight against Russia,
- military aid to Israel for its fight against Hamas,
- military aid to Taiwan to build a porcupine defense against China, and
- humanitarian aid to Gaza, the West Bank, and Ukraine.
But Trump has suddenly deemed all that adverse to his political interest. This egocentric, autocratic oaf wants chaos to prevail at the border so that he can continue blaming Biden for it in campaign stump speeches.
And so, on cue, Republicans are falling all over themselves to denounce this bill. Each is seeking vainglory from showing abject loyalty to a man who views the world as his personal Checkerboard.
And yes, these are the same Republicans who once championed strong US borders and American global leadership. But, just like that, solving the border crisis or supporting key allies cannot hold a candle to kowtowing to Trump. Their about-face would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
Moderate Republicans doing the Dodo dance
The term ‘moderate Republican’ is becoming an oxymoron, something akin to ‘jumbo shrimp.’ Exhibit A is the way a small group of right-wingers prevailed upon moderates to acquit Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors twice, despite clear and convincing evidence to impeach him.
If the Republican Party weren’t such a Trumpian cult, the so-called moderates would oust Speaker Johnson the way MAGA right-wingers ousted his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. But the sad truth is that Johnson is doing Trump’s bidding because he knows no Republican has the balls to challenge him for doing so.
Indeed, Trump’s Pied Piper influence is such that Sen. James Lankford, the Republican architect of this bill, is now signaling his intent to toe the party line and vote against it. And Republicans couldn’t care less that Trump is leading them down a Primrose path.
After all, killing abortion rights turned their expected red wave over Democrats into a blood bath for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. Likewise, killing this border bill seems bound to continue that blood bath in the 2024 general elections.
In other words, it is bad enough that the Republican Party has become a Trumpian cult. But it’s a cult that seems animated by a political death wish.
What price loyalty to Trump? Collateral damage
The world is watching America abandon reason and allies in ways that are as incomprehensible as they are irresponsible. But Russia and China can’t believe their dumb luck. Because the last-minute collapse of this bill would be tantamount to letting Russia have its way with Ukraine and inviting China to do the same with Taiwan.
Not to mention that this collapse would come on the heels of the spectacular way America abandoned Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, even dire-hard allies like the EU and Israel are having to wonder if their national security depends more on bribing Trump than supporting America.
Meanwhile, Republicans putting loyalty to Trump above all else only hints at the reputational damage it’s causing to American leadership on the world stage. And that damage could last generations – if it’s reparable at all.
With Super Bowl fever in the air, this analogy seems apt: Watching this bill pass through Congress is like watching your team fumble the ball at the goal line. Except, of course, that this is a game of life and death.
A call for reason and a break in the fever
In 2012, then-President Barack Obama famously assured the American people as follows:
My expectation is that if we can break this fever, that we can invest in clean energy and energy efficiency because that’s not a partisan issue. … I believe that If we’re successful in this election, when we’re successful in this election, that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.
(Politico, June 1, 2012)
However, the Republican Party dashed Obama’s expectations by nominating Donald Trump to succeed him in 2016. That the American people then elected Trump could not have been more foreboding.
Now, that fever has become so acute that partisan issues are like articles of cult-like faith, and common sense is like blind loyalty, not to the country but to one man.
Only blind loyalty to Trump explains this bill’s impending doom. And it should make crystal clear that the myth of a rational, Trump-free GOP is dead.
Don’t boo, vote Blue?
Obama will be out on the campaign trail this year urging Americans to vote for Democrats to save America from descending into a Trumpian cult. But Hispanic Democrats are lining up to vote against this bill with equal fervor. So, I feel obliged to at least acknowledge this foreboding symmetry.
To be fair, though, their reasons for doing so are far more salutary. For example, the Hispanic Caucus resents that this bill provides no path to citizenship for the “Dreamers” and 11 million other Hispanics living in the shadows across America.
But Democrats should beware. Because, no matter how principled their motives, Hispanics are signaling their intent to wield the kind of influence in the Democrat Party that MAGA extremists now wield in the Republican Party.
Of course, that also means systematically usurping Blacks as the backbone of the party. In which case, their rise might trigger an internecine struggle with Blacks for the soul of the Democratic Party.
MAGA Republicans will be looking on with glee. After all, a Democratic Party divided against itself will be easier to defeat.
God help America.