Donald Trump has a lot of things going for him, a sense of humor, a willingness to say whatever is on his mind, but his best asset is his ability to turn his opponents into absolute idiots.
There used to be something called the Monster Raving Loony Party in Britain, and that’s what the Democrats are beginning to sound like.
No, this isn’t about AOC and the Green New Deal. It’s about Beto. Robert Francis O’Rourke, the great Democratic hope who lost the Texas Senate race in 2018, but somehow didn’t descend into oblivion.
Right now, he thinks he has the wind at his back with Trump’s campaign for a border wall. If Trump wants to erect a new wall, Beto wants to tear down the existing one. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked him about that.
“Yes, absolutely,” answered Beto. “I’d take the wall down.”
Up to now, the Democrats have been a little hypocritical on the subject of walls. As senators, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted for funds for 700 miles of fencing wall in 2006. But when Trump wanted a bigger wall, Nancy Pelosi said that walls are immoral.
That’s trying to have it both ways. If walls are really immoral, you’d want to tear down the existing ones. That would be logical and consistent. And also very stupid.
To see that, just visit San Diego. There are two walls there, one 10 feet high and the other 15. They replaced the single strand of cable that used to mark the border with Tijuana. When the walls were erected, they cut illegal border crossings by 95 percent. Tijuana is the world’s highest rate of homicides. And Beto wants to take the wall down.
I wrote a book about the dangers of an all-powerful presidency, back when Obama was ruling by executive order, so I’m not a fan of Trump’s proposal to declare an emergency and fund the wall.
But Trump’s clarity on the issue had revealed what Beto, and the rest of the Monster Raving Loony Party, really believe.
F.H. Buckley teaches at Scalia Law School and is the author of “The Republican Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy, and Why It Was Just What We Needed.”