OPINION:
Barack Obama is gone from the White House, but his malign influence hangs over Washington like a blue haze. He failed to “fundamentally transform” America, but Democrats who made his slogan their own refuse to surrender the defeated cause. Despite the fact that Donald Trump has occupied the Oval Office for nearly two months, the opposition party stubbornly acts in concert with the “not my president” crowd. Their tune sounds dangerously close to “not my nation.”
Fresh from a weekend respite, Senate Democrats vowed on Monday to force a government shutdown if the Republican majority dares submit a spending bill that includes money to pay for President Trump’s border wall, or deletes money for Planned Parenthood. They introduced legislation to counter the president’s revised executive order restricting travelers from terror-exporting nations, arguing that it’s a Muslim ban in new wrapping.
Without a giggle, Democrats asserted that if they refuse to support a spending measure it would be the other party’s fault. “If [Republicans] insist on inserting poison pill riders such as defunding Planned Parenthood, building a border wall, or starting deportation [of illegal immigrants in big numbers], they will be shutting down the government and delivering a severe blow to our economy,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats in a letter to Republican congressional leaders. Congress must appropriate new funds by April 28 to avoid a shutdown.
It’s the Capitol Hill version of “heads I win, tails you lose.” In the view from the left, Republicans are always to blame when political differences lead to a government closure. Whether Republicans are pushing their liberal counterparts or resisting their pressure, every squabble that causes the federal government to run out of money is laid at Republican feet.
Shutdowns have occurred a dozen times since the Reagan era, most recently in 2013, when Congress failed to enact a spending bill in which Republicans had inserted language delaying or defunding Obamacare. Republicans relented after 16 days of merciless pounding by Democrats and their media allies. Now they cringe whenever Democrats even whisper “government shutdown.”
When the choice is between their transformative agenda and human life, Democrats do not choose life. It doesn’t matter that the border wall is meant to keep out more than illegal immigrants. The barrier would stem the flow of illegal drugs from the south that claimed the lives of 50,000 Americans, mostly young adults, in 2016 alone. Those lost Americans constitute collateral damage, along with the 323,999 children aborted in 2014 by Planned Parenthood.
Without a majority in Congress, the Democrats’ legislation is a lost cause. They understand that, but it’s part of their relentless insurrectionist campaign to strangle the new presidency by fair means or foul. The last thing the insurrectionist Democrats want is for Donald Trump to “make America great again.” They’re determined to continue the Obama crusade to transform America into a nation that can never be exceptional again.
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