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March 15, 2019

The Senate's 'Dirty Dozen': Doing nothing about the border except obstructing Trump

By Monica Showalter

Call it the procession of the RINOs. Call it the dirty dozen, standing up and getting themselves counted.

Loaded with piety, tears, and flapdoodle, 12 GOP senators proudly voted to halt President Trump's declaration of a "state of emergency" at the U.S. border as migrant caravan after migrant caravan after migrant caravan from Central America and beyond prepare to roll into the states through our porous border, and cartel human smugglers prepare for a big cash flow to themselves, the better to wreak havoc on Mexico and Central America.

Utah Senators Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, plus the usuals, Maine's Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski, all made their Democratic colleagues in the Senate very, very happy with that vote cast against President Trump. Proud of yourselves, Utah?

For us, they threw out pious slop like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, the sudden appeal of the constitution! Oh, that sudden 'concern' about separation of powers, and an imperial presidency. Oh, those creepy claims to really, truly, ooly, caring about border security as the caravans with a 's' prepare to roll in.

Funny they only come out with this crap when the issue is President Trump's border wall. Where were they, and all their Elmer Gantry pieties, back when President Trump and his recent predecessors declared other states of emergency - such as the one on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, or the importance of not doing business with Burundi, or the one about blocking property of bad people running Nicaragua? 

Because let's face it, declaring states of emergency is routinely done by presidents these days.

Somehow, they didn't get as loud. In fact, we didn't get any of this talk from them, based on what I was able to find, though I wouldn't put it past Rand Paul. 

No, they've decided that now is the time to bring up constitutional separations of powers as the real issue and let what happens, happen, at the border, never mind that it actually is an emergency.

Think I'm kidding?

A Gallup poll of Latin Americans revealed that five million people from that region alone are planning to migrate here this year alone. With just one million legal immigration slots available, most would therefore be planning to do it illegally. U.S. immigration law has become an irrelevant detail to them. 

That's the crisis. The Border Patrol guys see it - they've seen a massive surge in illegal crossings in just this year alone. According to left-wing NPR, they are arriving by the busloads in family units in numbers at a 10-year high. So long as a wall isn't there but it's being talked about, and courts keep thwarting any effort to send illegal border crossers home while the goodies are being rolled out as incentives from the state, the word getting out is get in while you can. The time is now. Start the surge. 

What we are looking at is a Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan-style human-wave migrant exodus of the kind that rolled into Europe in 2015 and changed the face of Europe, and not particularly for the better, as illiterate migrants presented big bills to the state, while migrant rapes and robberies and killings became normalized. It might be workable if the coming migrants were people with English language skills and enough education to help the country. Congress is the one that has the job of expanding quotas to accommodate that possibility, which is something it won't do. But the ones coming don't have those things - they're coming for the free stuff, offered as actual enticements to migrate illegally by states such as California.

And now these dirty dozen decide that this vote was a good time to have a constitutional debate instead as the tens of thousands of unvetted illegal migrants breach the border?

What the heck are they doing about that? The answer? Nothing. They're telling Trump he's on his own and if the illegals flow in, the illegals flow in. Some border concern.

All I can say is, look at the comments on Romney's pious tweet, explaining himself to constituents - the opponents criticizing him are getting 'likes' in the hundreds. The constituents praising him are getting 'likes' that can be counted on one hand.

 To their credit, wavering Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina,* Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Cory Gardner of Colorado didn't join the dozen. Those are people we can still respect because they see that there is a problem out there, Trump' call to emergency in the wake of the constant thwarting of the border wall at a time of vast electoral fraud and massive social spending based on the presence of illegals does make some sense, even for those who are concerned about overridding presidential power. It's also a fact that voters sent Trump to the White House instead of some prettyboy who says the right things, all because they trusted him to get something done and wanted the elites taught a lesson.

The twelve here aren't all horrible people on every issue, but their refusal to back Trump at a critical time is disturbing. Since they're part of the elites who haven't learned the voters' lesson, maybe it's time for the voters to make it more personal for them in their next election. This won't be forgotten. 

*An earlier version of this piece misidentified Sen. Tillis's state and has since been corrected.

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