What Republicans Should Be Doing Instead

T here is news out of Washington, D.C., that congressional Republicans may shut down the government. Again. This gesture will accomplish nothing, as usual, except to anger people who like national parks. The powers that rule us have already made sure that when the federal government goes into hibernation at home, American money and personnel will keep on running as normal in Ukraine. Shutting down the government has backfired on the party that initiated it every single time it has been tried in the modern era, so of course Republicans are going to do it.

This same death wish expresses itself in a prematurely launched impeachment inquiry. Republicans have lots of good evidence that Joe Biden is too mixed up with his son, Hunter, who is too mixed up with foreign money and controlled substances. But most news consumers haven’t heard about “the big guy.” They haven’t read Hunter’s complaints about his money being mixed up with Joe’s. They haven’t read the testimony from Devon Archer or Tony Bobulinski. These names mean nothing to them. Impeachment has also backfired on every party that has tried it in the modern era.

Here’s what Republicans should be doing instead.

Go to Eagle Pass, Texas. Bring a camera. Remind voters that the crisis at the border is Joe Biden’s fault. He dismantled the policies that stopped human caravans from coming to the southern border. Then go to New York City and do the same. Show the overflowing refugee centers that are costing the city many billions of dollars a year to run. Remind voters that Joe Biden’s policy is to bend the laws to give a huge percentage of these people five-year work permits, and an effective amnesty. Then show the tent cities that have cropped up around Los Angeles, a city that doesn’t even try to keep anything like public order anymore under the crush of new migrants.

Uncontrolled immigration is massively unpopular. That’s why even the residents of Martha’s Vineyard mobilized the National Guard to take their streets back, block by block, as if they had just listened to the conclusion of Pat Buchanan’s 1992 convention speech. Almost half of New York State’s counties have passed emergency measures barring the influx of migrants being shipped out of overcrowded conditions in New York City. As hotels and other buildings in cities like Boston and Chicago are requisitioned to take in hundreds of migrants apiece, Americans are going out and protesting.

If the segment given to you on TV news is more than a minute long, take time to explain how the neglect of the law doesn’t just hurt Americans but hurts the migrants themselves. A three-year-old drowned in the Rio Grande yesterday. That three-year-old would never have been brought on an attempted journey into the U.S. if not for Joe Biden’s signaling that he was running the border like the turnstiles on D.C.’s Metro — just jump over, it’s fine.

Americans, the most pro-immigration people in the world, are now refusing to tell pollsters that immigration is a “good thing.” In Gallup polling, the vast majority of Republicans want to see immigration decreased. So do nearly one in five Democrats. This is a no-brainer.

Republicans in the House: If you really want to jazz things up politically, start saying that the border crisis is more important than sending more aid to Ukraine. That will get the usual people to make the usual taunt that the United States can “walk and chew gum at the same time.” So then ask in return: Why doesn’t it?

The oldest principle of leadership is that you ought to have your own house in order before ruling over others. Well, we have a broken fence. We have a trampled welcome mat. Children are literally dying on our doorstep because of our negligence and mismanagement.

Republicans: Wake up and start telling America that your priority is fixing the border. Then do it.