Force Trump to build a border wall?
Trump refused a deal from Schumer that included a "border wall" back in January. I don't think Trump wants a border wall. He would be right not to want one, in my opinion. It's a huge loser for him.
Maybe Dems should force him to build one then. I'm not talking about "enhanced fencing with drones and patrols." I'm talking about a wall. We should force Trump to build a "really huge, beautiful wall," just like he always says he wants.
Bear with me. (And, remember, there are no bad ideas in brainstorming.)
If the Dems put a fully funded, fully Trump-featured border wall on the table, then DACA would become law. Most people (even a lot of Republicans) support a DACA deal. The Dems would get credit for compromising. The dreamers, importantly, would get a path to citizenship.
Trumpies, unlike Trump, really want a wall. Trump would have a hard time refusing a deal that delivers to the Trumpies exactly what Trump sold them. Republicans in Congress, like Trump, probably don't really want a wall, especially border state Republicans. However, as we have seen, Congressional Republicans are petrified of resisting Trump on anything.
Despite being forced into the deal, Trump would declare it a huge victory. Republicans in Congress would be under a lot of pressure not to deny Trump his "victory." Dems would be voting for the deal. Would the Republicans in Congress choose that moment to turn on Trump? It doesn't seem likely. Either we would get enough Republicans to pass the deal or Republicans would need to be near-unanimous in rejecting a deal supported by Trump.
The wall in the deal would have to be "huge and beautiful," just like Trump has always described it. It can't be a compromised, more economical, less environmentally invasive version of the wall or Trump can refuse the deal (which, as I say, he probably wants to do anyway). We could offer Trump $25 billion for a giant, brick-and-mortar, barbed-wire-topped, electronically surveilled wall. Can a Trumpian wall be built for $25B? Who knows? But let's hear Trump try to school the Dems on how dumb they are and raise the cost to $100 billion. I don't think he'll do it, because he doesn't want the true cost of his big, beautiful, stupid wall known.
Regardless of a deal, the wall's not going to be built anyway. In theory, Trump would go down in flames by 2020 whether he makes the deal or refuses it (or Mueller nabs him). If Trump refuses, he refuses to build the wall his Trumpie base wants. If he takes the deal, the project immediately runs into physical and political reality problems that it doesn't have to face while it is merely hot air. Two years is a long time for Republicans in Congress to stand by watching Trump fail at trying to build a monument to Republican folly. It would test their survival instincts.
The Dems don't even have to be disingenuous in the deal. The whole time we are negotiating, we can be completely clear about how idiotic the wall idea is, how Mexico was supposed to have paid for it, etc. The Dems can be up front. It's the Republicans, including Trump, who will have to be disingenuous. (That's ok, because they are really good at it.) They'll have to pretend they love the wall while scrambling to figure out a way not to support it.
If Dems don't do a wall deal, then Trump is going to use his being denied a wall (again, a wall he probably doesn't really want) against us. The Republican Congress will fail to resolve immigration, but they and Trump will blame the Dems. Republicans will try to stampede people (much like they did with Iraq under Bush in the 2002 midterms) into believing there is an imminently dangerous, huge crisis that doesn't really exist. Dems will be cast as "open borders," traitorous, obstructionist...blah...blah...Republican bullshit as usual...blah.
The cards don't look terrible for November without giving Trump his wall, so sitting tight, denying Trump a victory, and trying to win on the sheer nuttiness of the orange clown and the obsequiousness of his Congressional Republicans is promising. It's (I suppose) the safe play. And maybe there are some other things coming. Obama may get in the act for example, and we could get some more high profile traditional Republican defections. We also have some pretty good candidates, while the Republicans are still barring non-nuts from participation on their side.
If the Republicans do end up with a wall project, though, especially a Trumpian wall project, it could be good for Dems for years to come. For the price of, say, $25B (think of it as stimulous for the construction industry), we get a monument to Republican idiocy. Texans already don't like the idea. It has no chance of succeeding. When it finally fails, the Dem majority can fund the demolition project for whatever small parts of it are actually built. However we should leave about a 5-mile section of it, paint it gold, and put a plaque on it. We can have a contest about what to put on the plaque.
/opinion
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