A Tough Week for Conservative Populists

Conservative populists definitely could have had a better week.  For a little bit, it looked like the man they worked so hard to get elected may abandon his principles in favor of positive coverage from the mainstream media and pats on the back from establishment Republicans who did not even vote for him.

 

The President held a meeting with 22 members of Congress with the focus on hammering out a “bipartisan” deal on immigration, with both Houses and parties represented; although most of the people in the room’s views on immigration reflect the “uni-party” consensus that favors legalizing millions of illegal immigrants in exchange for vague and meaningless border security promises from the Democrats.  Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), a member of the “Gang of Eight” who compiled the 2013 amnesty bill, sat on the President’s left, while House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sat on his right. During the meeting, President Trump said that he trusted the people in the room and would sign any deal that they come up with, regardless of whether or not it had what he wanted in it.  Apparently, he did not read my New Years’ Resolution for him, which advised him “Don’t Trust Anyone. Ever.”  At one point during the meeting, “Sneaky Dianne Feinstein” suggested passing a clean DACA bill with the “promise” of working on a comprehensive immigration reform bill later.  President Trump agreed to her suggestion until House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy explained that her idea would not include securing the border.  Another lowlight of the meeting occurred when President Trump said he would “take the heat” from the right for signing onto an unpopular amnesty bill.  The meeting made it perfectly clear that many on the left and right still fail to grasp why President Trump won the Republican primary and later the Presidency.

 

The establishment’s failure to understand the Trump phenomenon became even clearer when Senators Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake introduced their framework for immigration reform, which includes a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and other illegal immigrants while doing very little to secure the border and end chain migration.  These three Senators have quite a bit in common.  All three of them attended Tuesday’s meeting, they all cosponsored the “Gang of Eight” amnesty scheme of 2013, and they all voted against President Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.  The party identifications of the trio do not matter that much, they all seem to agree that an abundance of low-skilled immigrants benefits our country. The rest of the “Gang of Six” that introduced this piece of crap bill includes two other members of the Gang of Eight, Senators Bob Menendez and Michael Bennet, and newcomer Cory Gardner, who sat in the House of Representatives when the “Gang of Eight” bill passed the Senate five years ago. Fortunately, President Trump has indicated that he will not sign the “Gang of Six” bill into law.  The media and the left might say that he “played” the bipartisan group of lawmakers by saying that he would sign anything they would come up with but the American people ought to find that a refreshing contrast, as they have repeatedly been “played” over the years by elected officials in the Swamp promising to secure the border but never delivering on that promise.        

 

Conservatives had mixed reviews of the televised immigration meeting.  Ann Coulter called it the “lowest day in the Trump Presidency.”  Radio host Mark Levin also commented on the meeting, saying “That’s no art of the deal, that’s complete surrender.”  Conservative actor James Woods said that “If #Trump rolls over on #DACA, he loses my vote.  That is a promise.”   Radio and Fox News Host Laura Ingraham did not like it when the President channeled his inner Jeb Bush and told Congress to come up with a “bill of love.”  Rush Limbaugh, arguably the king of talk radio, had a different take, arguing that the meeting had nothing to do with immigration; it was intended to refute the claims made in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury calling into question the President’s fitness for office.

 

In a press conference with the Norwegian Prime Minister on Wednesday, President Trump tried to reassure his base that any DACA deal will include funding for the wall, saying “It’s got to include the wall.  We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in.”

 

     

 

Hours after the bipartisan immigration meeting ended, a federal judge based out of San Francisco struck down President Trump’s rollback of DACA, citing one of President Trump’s tweets laying out the sympathetic argument for letting the “dreamers” stay in the country as the justification for his decision.  The judge also stated that the President’s decision to rescind DACA was based on a “flawed legal premise.”  Any judge who actually looked at the law would have realized that President Obama’s decision to give 800,000 illegal immigrants amnesty by executive fiat in the first place rested on a “flawed legal premise.”  The Former President admitted to immigration activists several times prior to making the decision that he did not have the authority to unilaterally change immigration law.  He made the decision for purely political reasons, hoping it would increase his share of the Hispanic vote in his re-election campaign. The judge in this case effectively acted as a super-legislator, making his decision based on what “serves the public interest” rather than the law or the Constitution.  This type of judicial activism reigns supreme in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over San Francisco.  Always looking for a silver lining, I wonder if the judge’s decision means that the Democrats will not try as hard to rush through DACA legislation before the government runs out of money next week now that a judge has ruled that “DACA must stay in place until all litigation over Trump’s decision has played out”, effectively erasing the March 5 deadline.     

 

     

 

             

 

On the electoral front, two Republican incumbents who represent districts that Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 Presidential Election announced that they would not seek re-election.  Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced their retirements, which will make it easier for the Democrats to pick up their respective districts.  Republicans now have to defend four open seats won by Hillary Clinton while the Democrats only have to defend three open seats in districts carried by President Trump.  Thanks to the retirements of Issa and Royce, Republicans now start off as underdogs in four of the open GOP-held seats carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016.  So far, 44 members of the House of Representatives have announced their intentions not to seek re-election in 2018; the retiring Republican incumbents outnumber retiring Democrats 2-1.  The Democrats have 91 seats on their target list while the Republicans only have 36 on theirs.  Altogether, Republicans have to defend 23 seats won by Hillary Clinton and Democrats have to defend 12 seats won by President Trump.  Keep in mind the Democrats only need a net gain of 24 seats to gain a majority.  Then, we’ll all have to deal with a Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  On the Senate side, Republicans have better electoral prospects, as they only have to defend one Senate seat carried by Hillary Clinton while the Democrats have to defend ten seats in states carried by President Trump.    

 

 

While conservative populists may have experienced some jolts of anxiety this week, they received some reassurance that the Trump Administration remains committed to enforcing our immigration laws.  The Department of Homeland Security made the decision to end temporary protected status for around 200,000 Salvadorans residing in the country due to a series of earthquakes that happened seventeen years ago.  The DHS has generously decided to give the Salvadorans until September 2019 “to leave or seek other means to obtain lawful residency.” It looks like the bureaucrats have no grasp of the meaning of the word “temporary.”   ICE raided several 7-Elevens employing illegal immigrants.  The Department of Homeland Security busted a series of anchor baby operations in California where pregnant Chinese women paid between $30,000 and $80,000 to stay in  luxury apartment complexes doubling as “maternity hotels” while they waited to give birth to their babies in the United States, automatically making them American citizens.   These anchor babies will have the ability to sponsor their parents for an American Green Card when they turn 21, assuming no changes will be made to our immigration system between now and then.           

 

Conservative populists may have had a tough week this week but they will have a tough election night this fall if President Trump signs a no-strings attached amnesty into law.  Let’s make sure that does not happen.