With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?
I'm talking about the pantywaists in Congress who are threatening to derail the president's efforts to get Mexico to stanch the flow of illegal aliens across our southern border.
In recent days, as the president has tried to find a workaround of a Congress intent on not securing our border, he has faced opposition from Republicans who, all of a sudden, have decided they are free traders.
The president's plan is ingenious.
Democrats in Congress and on the federal bench have frustrated every effort he's made to bring order back to immigration into our country. The laws on the books are hurtful in many areas, and completely ignored in other areas. And across our border, something more than a million people a year are streaming illegally, bringing with them untold problems and diseases.
He tried to build a wall. He tried to move federal employees. He tried to build a wall again. He has pushed and pushed and pushed to do the thing he promised Americans he would do.
And the open-border Democrats -- forgive the redundancy -- have blocked him every step of the way. As a consequence, we face record levels of illegal immigration. The Democrats have literally made it impossible for him to secure the border.
So he thought of a way to get Mexico to secure the border.
It does have two sides, after all, and enforcement south of the border can work just as well as enforcement north of the border.
So he figured out a way to get Mexico to see our problem as its problem, and to prod it to solve it.
Tariffs.
Mexico lives off trade with the United States. That is its lifeblood. That is its tender part.
And Trump put the Mexican tender part in a vice.
Stop the flood of illegal aliens across the American and Mexican border, or the United States will slap a tariff on everything exported by Mexico to the United States.
Five percent next week, and five additional percent the first of every month until it tops out at a 25% tariff.
Put another way, the president told Mexico to either fix the problem or watch its economy collapse.
This is a pretty effective motivation technique.
It's hardball, it's not overly polite, but it is real world, and it is the way nations have done business throughout history.
And the move has the potential to do great good for the United States. It puts the Mexican government to work protecting our southern flank, and returning order and legality to immigration across the Mexican border.
It's a great solution.
And then the Republicans effed it up.
Not the Democrats. Not Nancy Pelosi. Not AOC. Not any of the other psychos in the donkey party.
It was Republicans. The supposed good guys.
The guys who are riding Trump's coattails.
They decided that tariffs are protectionist, whatever the hell that is, and that they violate the principle of free trade which, apparently to them, is more important than national security and identity.
And they went to the press. Republicans chitter chattered to the "Washington Post," Jeff Bezos' official anti-Trump organ. That resulted in a front-page story saying the Mexican tariffs were in trouble.
And that resulted in Mexico breathing a sigh of relief.
It also probably resulted in one more fail in the effort to retake control of immigration.
All thanks to the Republicans.
And other idiots who don't understand how tariffs work.
Like the people on the evening news.
Breathlessly, they have reported that Mexico isn't going to pay the tariffs, American consumers are. (Insert ungodly number of exclamation points here.)
Well, no duh.
Consumers pay tariffs.
If they are dumb enough to buy the more-expensive tariffed products.
When a 5% tariff is slapped on all Mexican products, those products will become less cost competitive. That will increase as the tariff increases. That's the leverage of a tariff. Mexico doesn't pay it, nobody pays it. Because eventually nobody buys the more-expensive product. That crimps and eventually kills Mexican manufacturing, petroleum and agriculture.
That's the club Trump was trying to hold over Mexico's head.
And it was a club that would have worked.
Until the Republicans got stupid.
Stupider.
And that's what's frustrating to the people who voted for Trump. We understand that Democrats hate him and will obstruct him at every turn. We wish it was otherwise, and we hope it changes, but at least we know where the Democrats are coming from.
But the Republicans, the ones who woo the press by backstabbing Trump, mystify us. Supposedly, they agree with his general philosophy. Supposedly, they are his partners. Supposedly, they are on our side.
But at the first opportunity to kick him in the ass, they do.
And America's border security will suffer as a result. The president's negotiating position will be weakened as a result. The nation will be hurt as a result.
And that's no good.
It's like I said.
With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?