Kansas Crimson

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 10:07 am

twocoach wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:54 am

Shirley wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:46 am

Trump Privately Pressuring GOP Senators To ‘Kill’ Border Deal To Deny Biden A Win

Donald Trump on Wednesday privately pressured Senate Republicans to “kill” a bipartisan deal to secure the U.S. border because he doesn’t want President Joe Biden to chalk up a win ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a source familiar with the tenuous negotiations on the package.

Trump directly reached out to several GOP senators on Wednesday to tell them to reject any deal, said this source, who requested anonymity to speak freely. The GOP presidential frontrunner also personally reached out to some Senate Republicans over the weekend, the source told HuffPost.

“Trump wants them to kill it because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” said the source. “He told them he will fix the border when he is president… He said he only wants the perfect deal.”

Trump’s meddling generated an “emotional” discussion in a closed door meeting between Senate Republicans on Wednesday, as senators vented their frustrations for hours about the largely secret negotiations over emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and immigration. The conference is splintering into two camps: those who believe Republicans should take the deal, and those who are opposed at any cost.

“The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” said the source. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”

“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,” the source added.

[...]

I'd say that wanting Biden not to get any credit for making progress on the border is distinctly different than having an open border policy.

Isn't this a distinction without a substantive difference?

We all agree that there is an immediate need for stronger border legislation.

There appears to be a signature-ready, bipartisan deal for stronger border legislation.

If Trump uses his power over the GOP to prevent the passage of stronger border legislation for electoral purposes, isn't the result that at least 12 months will go by without the passage of stronger border legislation?

twocoach wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:29 am

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 10:07 am

twocoach wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:54 am

I'd say that wanting Biden not to get any credit for making progress on the border is distinctly different than having an open border policy.

Isn't this a distinction without a substantive difference?

We all agree that there is an immediate need for stronger border legislation.

There appears to be a signature-ready, bipartisan deal for stronger border legislation.

If Trump uses his power over the GOP to prevent the passage of stronger border legislation for electoral purposes, isn't the result that at least 12 months will go by without the passage of stronger border legislation?

"Running" on something to me means "this is what I will do if I get elected". Trump is 100% not running on a open-border policy. I agree that his current behavior has the same result (even though I disagree that the current state is "open borders", it's not).

We all know what Trump is about. He wants praise, recognition and credit whether he earned it or not. He doesn't give a fuck about anything other than what feeds his ego and his wallet.

Cassandra wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:18 am Odds of Trump getting left off the ballet? lol. About the odds of Kyle Rittenhouse going to jail for doing nothing wrong.

Cassandra wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:18 am Odds of Trump getting left off the ballet? lol. About the odds of Kyle Rittenhouse going to jail for doing nothing wrong.

Cassandra wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:18 am Odds of Trump getting left off the ballet? lol. About the odds of Kyle Rittenhouse going to jail for doing nothing wrong.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:52 am

twocoach wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:29 am

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 10:07 am

Isn't this a distinction without a substantive difference?

We all agree that there is an immediate need for stronger border legislation.

There appears to be a signature-ready, bipartisan deal for stronger border legislation.

If Trump uses his power over the GOP to prevent the passage of stronger border legislation for electoral purposes, isn't the result that at least 12 months will go by without the passage of stronger border legislation?

"Running" on something to me means "this is what I will do if I get elected". Trump is 100% not running on a open-border policy. I agree that his current behavior has the same result (even though I disagree that the current state is "open borders", it's not).

We all know what Trump is about. He wants praise, recognition and credit whether he earned it or not. He doesn't give a fuck about anything other than what feeds his ego and his wallet.

Gotcha - I'm speaking more from a messaging standpoint. The Dems should hammer this every single day: there is a deal to harden the border and a single orange asshole is holding it up.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:36 am Sorta wild Trump is overtly running on a crash-the-economy and maintain-open-borders campaign strategy.

Shirley wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 7:32 am

jfish26 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:36 am Sorta wild Trump is overtly running on a crash-the-economy and maintain-open-borders campaign strategy.

The ads are writing themselves already:

Donald Trump and Republicans killed the immigration bill

Donald Trump is rooting for a depression

Donald Trump and republicans want to take your health care away

Donald Trump wants to end democracy

Donald Trump and republicans won’t defend democracies around the world

Donald Trump and republicans don’t want you to have the right to choose.

[...]

Shirley wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 7:54 am Excellent point. Why would they run someone again after he accomplished so little the first time he had a chance?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the verge of pulling the plug on any hopes for a bipartisan deal that includes funding for border security and aid to Ukraine. The culprit? Donald Trump, who has been urging Republicans to reject any deal, on the apparent theory that any compromise with Democrats will be insufficiently anti-immigrant by definition.

This has been widely seen as evidence that Trump wants border chaos to continue to use against President Biden in the election. But this whole episode reveals something else too: What Trump and the MAGA right really fear above all is a system that might function better without resorting to the maximally cruel and extreme restrictions they see as the only acceptable “solution.”

Punchbowl News reports that McConnell privately told GOP senators that with Trump winning the GOP nomination, the “politics have changed” on immigration, and a deal might “undermine him.” As Punchbowl notes, McConnell is “acknowledging Trump’s continued stranglehold on the GOP.”

Meanwhile, CNN reports that McConnell believes the GOP is in a “quandary” because Senate Republicans are divided on any deal, and anything the Senate passes would be opposed by House Republicans, who only want their own wildly radical border bill.

McConnell insists that talks are still ongoing. But at the very least, he is in the process of surrendering to the idea that Trump is in control of outcomes here.

Either way, the key question is this: What exactly are Trump, most Senate Republicans, and the House GOP rejecting as insufficient in terms of “securing the border”?

At the center of the talks is the $14 billion that Biden has asked for to fund new border enforcement agents, expanded detention, expedited consideration of asylum claims, and other border security measures. Republicans initially said that’s not enough without major policy changes.

So Democrats agreed to many policy concessions. Negotiators have reportedly agreed on provisions such as raising the bar to qualify for asylum, more expedited removal of some migrants from the interior, and a trigger that effectively closes down asylum seeking if border encounters climb too high.

I can add more: Negotiators have also been discussing the creation of a whole new process for administrations to remove asylum-seekers who fail their initial screening, according to sources close to the talks.

What’s more, due to that and other policy changes on the table, the emerging deal would end up spending substantially more money on immigration enforcement than even what Biden has requested, according to the sources.

That Republicans reject all these serious new restrictions—including much more border security spending—as insufficient shows how extreme the MAGA-fied GOP posture on this issue has become.

To illustrate the point, consider that Republicans have also pushed to gut Biden’s parole programs, which admit tens of thousands monthly who apply from abroad. Democrats have rejected this, angering Republicans who insist those programs abuse Biden’s parole authority.

But it’s important to understand why Democrats are rejecting this. These parole programs provide alternative legal pathways for migrants to enter the United States by securing a sponsor from afar and then flying into the country. Rather than requiring them to come to the border and seek asylum, this creates an orderly, rules-bound way to enter instead.

This is a crucial innovation under Biden: The idea is to shift incentives away from the very sort of migration—crossing the border and then requesting asylum—that is creating the strains on the border infrastructure that Republicans claim to fear and loathe.

Republicans should applaud that shift. But they oppose those programs precisely because they allow migrants to enter the country in a functional way. They’re abandoning a compromise that would spend billions more on border security; make asylum seeking more efficient, including removing those who don’t qualify faster; and create numerous other ways to expedite removal—because it doesn’t gut legal immigration programs that are working well.

What Republicans object to isn’t border chaos. It’s having more migrants come here successfully and efficiently.

Here’s a nuanced reading of McConnell’s position, offered by someone close to the talks: He now sees that due to Trump, the deal might not win enough GOP senators to pass with moderate Democrats. So he’s telling Republicans it’s time to decide whether they’ll let Trump dictate the outcome or accept a compromise that does much of what they want. The right answer is clear.

It’s sometimes argued that Democrats too are unreasonable on immigration; that they refuse to accept restrictions that are politically and substantively imperative. It’s true that any compromise would have to include new restrictions on asylum (my preferred deal would trade that for legalization of some undocumented immigrants living here and expanded legal pathways for entry). It’s also true that some on the left would reject such a deal.

But now that Republicans are balking at the compromise on the table, simply because Trump is instructing them to, it cannot be denied that the right is the primary obstacle to any reasonable compromise on this issue.

Underscoring the point, Trump has been telling Republicans to sink the deal so that he can “fix” immigration if elected again. It’s worth remembering that Trump was already president once, and guess what: He too released a lot of migrants into the interior, and he couldn’t pass his immigration agenda even with unified GOP control. But that aside, what he really means is this: Republicans must reject any deal that improves the system in ways both sides can accept, because the public might like it, closing off any chance at exploiting the current challenges to push his own wildly extreme agenda.

It’s often said that Republicans want border chaos for political reasons. But their opposition to compromise is more telling than that: Anything that reforms immigration without dramatically slashing legal immigration must be rejected, because to them, it isn’t a solution at all.

KUTradition wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 9:06 am what’s sad and most troubling, and what so many seem immune to accepting, is this isn’t about immigration. this isn’t even about republicans vs. democrats, or what’s best for the American people, or our economy or security

this is about trump

jfish26 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 9:14 am Which is sort of what I'm getting at.

Credit where it's "due" I guess - he has an amazing instinct for finding and exploiting weakness. And boy has he effectively found and exploited a very particular, very grievous moral and ethical failing that is MUCH more prevalent in our country than I would prefer to be the case.

japhy wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 10:15 am

jfish26 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 9:14 am Which is sort of what I'm getting at.

Credit where it's "due" I guess - he has an amazing instinct for finding and exploiting weakness. And boy has he effectively found and exploited a very particular, very grievous moral and ethical failing that is MUCH more prevalent in our country than I would prefer to be the case.

The cult seems to think they will get some satisfaction from enabling President Nil to burn it all to the ground. Some pyrrhic victory over the liberal elites, because the rubes have "nothing to lose". They have already lost their Merica. Even if they only "owned" it in sitcoms.

But they have a lot more to lose, just ask the folks who are sitting in prison for Jan 6. It's all fun and games until someone gets their eye poked out.

This ain't no video game or a reality TV show. When shit gets real they could lose it all. And the ironic lesson from the last recession is that the hated "elites" will benefit most in the transference of wealth that ensues from the chaos. And one of the things trumpty dumpty will likely burn to the ground is the Rubepublican party and the cowardly cohort currently running that ship. Who knows, there might be a conservative party that forms in the aftermath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuf6VzrpToE

Shirley wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 7:22 am For a former president and the Republican "incumbent" to only capture 54% of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary is way, way weak. Even in an open primary state, that's pathetic.

The media’s obsession with early, irrelevant polling (largely within the margin of error) leads them to conclude that Trump, now the likely nominee after New Hampshire, is the favorite to win the presidency. But if we look past the premature and utterly nonpredictive general election polls to examine Trump the candidate, his weaknesses appear overwhelming.

For starters, it is hardly good news for the party out of power when the election already revolves around the challenger’s fitness, rather than the incumbent’s performance. Past presidential challengers such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, John F. Kerry and Al Gore did not have the extra hurdle to prove they were sane, law-abiding and pro-democracy. Trump does, and he reinforces those concerns whenever he opens his mouth.

Consider the heavy baggage that comes with Trump. With less than 55 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and Iowa, his results were underwhelming for someone with near universal name recognition. GOP turnout in Iowa was mediocre at best; in New Hampshire, independents turned out in droves but Republicans made up a surprisingly small share of the primary electorate. His weakness among independent voters in New Hampshire should worry Republicans. A small group of committed followers does not mean widespread enthusiasm for the candidate.

Moreover, Trump seems more confused, incoherent and feeble than ever. Mistaking former president Barack Obama for President Biden, confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, running on about a made-up questions on a cognitive test (very meta, for him) and getting his world wars mixed up give the impression he’s slipping. Former representative Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) posted on X, “His confusion and lack of awareness is a trend. He’s aging very fast. I hope his family is getting him the help he needs.” Ouch. Imagine if Biden committed even one of these goofs — or slurred his words as Trump periodically does.

Beyond that, large numbers of Republicans (and independent voters) say they will not vote for him if he is convicted of a crime. There’s a good chance that will happen in either the New York business falsification case or in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot case. Along the way, outbursts, temper tantrums and bullying courtroom antics akin to those he has displayed in his civil cases will be in the news. And he’s likely to repeat some tirades on courthouse steps. No doubt he will consistently reinforce the perception that he is erratic, irrational, vengeful and unstable. He seems incapable of controlling himself.

And, don’t forget, a jury in E. Jean Carroll’s civil case already found him to be an inveterate liar and sexual attacker. A second E. Jean Carroll verdict against him for defamation is likely coming. And the New York case of fraudulent business valuations might underscore his compulsion to inflate his ego with more lies. “Repeatedly adjudicated liar” is not the moniker you want as a candidate.

Considering Trump’s specific promises to pursue dictatorial powers, his repeated praise for tyrants, the cast of misfits he would bring to the White House and his actual record (e.g., lost jobs, hundreds of thousands of avoidable covid-19 deaths), his likely opponent, Biden, has an embarrassment of riches. You can then throw in the GOP’s abysmal elections record over the past few years, its losing streak on abortion, House Republicans’ pitiful legislative record and the shrinking number of White Christian evangelicals (his core base of support). It sure does not seem like favorable political terrain for the probable GOP nominee.

Finally, the public is catching on to the economy’s strength. And as the Wall Street Journal reported, there is a good chance things get even better. (“Now Americans are bucking up as inflation cools and the Federal Reserve signals that interest-rate increases are likely behind us. And with the solid labor market putting money in the bank accounts of freely spending consumers, recession fears for 2024 are fading.”)

Sure, Trump might win in November. Tens of millions of people have been drawn into a fascist movement and have lost their grip on reality (as Romney has pointed out). But we should not confuse the unbreakable support Trump derives from cultist members with general election viability. Looking at the totality of the evidence, chances appear just as high that the former president will lose — and by a larger margin than he lost in 2020.

Democrats benefit from not getting overconfident, but they need to get a grip: Their side has many fewer problems than does the MAGA movement.