Photo by: J. Scott Applewhite
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., leaves the chamber after speaking about his plan to move a 1,300-page spending measure, which includes $5.7 billion to fund President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the sticking point in the standoff between Trump and Democrats that has led to a partial government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

McCarthy-McConnell Republicans betrayed Trump, killed the wall

By Ralph Z. Hallow
The Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Forget the sunny-side propaganda put out by all sides on the Great Border Security Compromise Act of 2019.

Its intentionally fatal flaw lets southern-border municipalities nix wall construction on their turf for any reason they choose.

These local jurisdictions tend to be as blue as this monstrosity of an act should make you feel if value American sovereignty.

So whether President Trump redirects $8 billion, $80 billion or $1 trillion to wall construction, the product will be a 1,954-foot hallway with enough permanently opened doors to let in the world.

Forget about legal clearance or lines.

That makes the new law a defeat for everything that President Trump has been striving to achieve. And a defeat as well for everyone else who, like the president, cherishes American exceptionalism and the rule of law.

This unnatural disaster happened because the Kevin McCarthy-Mitch McConnell Republicans in Congress betrayed Mr. Trump and then left him with no choice but to sign the legislation on Friday or get blamed for another government shutdown.

It’s a win for Mr. Trump only in the honest disgust he hurled at the law’s border-protection provisions before he inked his name to the measure’s 1,700 pages, with all the genuineness of an American POW signing a war-criminal confession in North Vietnam.

Otherwise, it’s a colossal defeat for America’s security, self-governance and self-respect.

That alone would be enough to make it a win for the Nancy Pelosi-Chuck Schumer Democratic party and their immigrants-without-borders agenda.

It’s actually more than just a win. It’s the kind of smashing success the Democrats could only dream of. Until Friday, they had butted their heads against the president’s obstinate drive to build an impenetrable wall.

Mr. Trump’s wall promise made him a hero to conservatives and to patriots of any affiliation. He has made the wall’s purpose clear from the beginning.

It is to, yes, make America great again — to return to American citizens through their elected representatives the exclusive power to decide who enters the United States, when, where, how and in what numbers.

Without those powers, we cease being a nation and become instead a global pawn.

The McCarthy-McConnell Republicans — despite their inevitable denials — gave silent consent to Democrats to ensure that no matter what heroic political and legal risks Mr. Trump takes in reallocating billions of dollars in emergency money, it will all be for naught.

Despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to win them over, those same Republicans stood by and watched the Pelosi-Schumer Democrats insert a provision that turned the whole border-security part of the bill into a gigantic poison pill, then gave Mr. Trump no choice but to sign it or get blamed for another government shutdown.

The McCarty-Mitchell Republicans, acting out of what they may have thought was self-preservation, have kept their eyes on polls. Whether Republican, Democratic or bipartisan-conducted, all surveys show a majority of voters oppose the wall. Yes, it may seem astonishing that Democrats have persuaded most Americans that walls don’t work or are immoral or both. But it’s fact of life.

Only six years ago, nearly two-thirds of Americans favored a 700-mile border barrier — so long as the poll called it a “fence.” Now only about 37 percent favor a “wall,” a word that has been a negative for Americans at least since President Reagan urged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall (which was built to keep Germans from leaving, not entering the communist-ruled eastern sector).

What this growth in disfavor for a wall suggests about the leadership abilities of the Republican congressional honchos and their persuasiveness with voters isn’t pretty to contemplate. Mr. Trump’s right-between-the-eyes rhetoric on illegal immigrants played a role too in making a wall seem somehow un-American to some voters.

Since reducing their voter base largely to unionized teachers and minorities, Democrats need an exclusive franchise on the fast-multiplying Hispanics to rule America forever.

They may have just got it.

The trouble with runaway illegal immigration is that at some point it becomes irreversible, because of the sheer numbers of people affected through border-jumping relatives and friends.

Here’s the unedited part of the new law that makes the Pelosi Democrats confident that all our tomorrows as a nation will belong to them.

Make yourself read this legispeak. After all, Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer selflessly donated to it their valuable 22 seconds of creative cogitation and 2 minutes, 33 seconds of ambiguous writing:

“SEC. 232. (a) Prior to use of any funds made available by this Act for the construction of physical barriers within the city limits of any city or census designated place described in subsection ( c), the Department of Homeland Security and the local elected officials of such a city or census designated place shall confer and seek to reach mutual agreement regarding the design and alignment of physical barriers within that city or the census designated place (as the case may be). Such consultations shall continue until September 30, 2019 (or until agreement is reached, if earlier) and may be extended beyond that date by agreement of the parties, and no funds made available in this Act shall be used for such construction while consultations are continuing.”

Well, a minute, you say. Doesn’t Section 232 put an end date on consultations? No. Be assured, the history of all hitherto existing interpretations of legislation have met what will now be known as the Pelosi-Schumer interpretation:

Applied in a way that neither Mr. Trump nor you will like.

The courts, also run mostly by judges who see the world through blue-colored glasses, will also favor the immigrants-without-borders interpretation.

By the time it gets to the Supreme Court, you’ll be asked to press 1 for Spanish, 2 for English. (Let us all stipulate our love of Spanish and Hispanics and our abhorrence of disunifying bilingualism.)

But wait. There’s even less in this new law — less that’s acceptable, that is.

Border jumpers used to be able to simply plant a foot on our side of Rio Grande to get a legal pass to disappear into U.S. interior forever. Republican House and Senate leaders made no effort to change that in this god-awful act.

If you think there can’t be more poison in this new law, you’d be wrong.

Unaccompanied children crossing the border will now get automatic amnesty

Tienes un dia bueno dia (Spanish for “Tienes un dia bueno dia”).