That, in brief, is Trump's strategy to win the shutdown battle — a combative "caravan redo," as one administration official put it to the Daily Beast. The strategy is a kind of Republican atavism, reminiscent of the party's 1952 K1C2 Formula for winning the presidential election; it threw at Democrats the rather catchy charge of Korea, Communism and Corruption.
Republicans rule by folly and campaign by slogans, but this time they're doing both. Trump and friends intend to slam the Dems for "wanting illicit drugs, terror, and 'trafficking' pouring over the southern border" as they pursue the imbecility of a bootless wall, so that the United States government may reopen. They never use a popgun when a cannon will do.
The White House informed the Beast that it will dispatch spokespeople to spread the word, rile the base and, it hopes, humiliate Democrats. Fact is, they're already spreading. Said "prominent Trump surrogate" Matt Schlapp: "I think the key for the president is to make it abundantly clear to the incoming [Democratic] majority in the House that he is going to blame them for each and every [migrant] caravan, for each and every rushing of the border, for the violence that occurs as a result
of illegal immigration. The game is on. He is going to go after them… It is going to be their fault and they will own all of it."
It seems not to have occurred to Schlapp, Trump & Assoc. that Democrats can just as shamelessly blame the White House for each and every border violation, since it's the White House that has shut down so many of government's operations. This is not to mention that the Dems have Trump on tape: "I am proud to shut down the government for border security…. I will be the one to shut it down." Only a GOP Janus — meaning all of them — could afterwards claim that a shutdown is Democrats' fault and "they will own all of it."
Not to be outdone in cynical marketing was the White House's execrable Stephen Miller, spawn of 20th-century immigration, who told CNN: "Right now as we speak there is a surge of illegal immigration heading toward our country that presents a national crisis now. Not a month from now, not a year from now, right now. And this president took an oath, like every lawmaker in Congress, to defend the citizens of this country. How many more innocent people have to die in pursuit of an open-borders agenda?"
Sound familiar? It should. Miller's message was Trump's message just prior to the midterm elections, which, by "historic" numbers, cost his party the House. Thus if Democrats keep their nerve — and if Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it, they will — Trump's "caravan redo" is likely to be a midterm redo, with Republican blood everywhere.
For Democrats already hold the public-opinion edge in this, the most mindless shutdown yet. Reports the Washington Post: "By a 14-point margin [in a Quinnipiac poll], more voters overall said they would blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats, 51 percent to 37 percent"; "independents … sided more with Democrats, with 48 percent of the swing-voting block saying Trump and Republicans would be to blame compared with 39 percent who blamed Democrats"; and "54 percent of voters still oppose the wall." According to a CNN poll, "57 percent of Americans opposed the wall." An October CBS poll "found a similar 60 percent in opposition." Surprising is that among wall supporters — i.e., nearly all of them Republicans — 43 percent opposed shuttering the government for a wall, said a Fox News poll last year.
This shutdown-as-showdown will be more a test of Democratic resolve than Republican. Trump was correct when he said in the instantly infamous Oval Office meeting with Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that the last time (the only time) you guys shut down the government, it didn't go so well. In January the Dems caved (over the Dreamers) in one of Schumer's NY minutes; they looked foolish and disoriented. Trump, however, is always foolish and disoriented. Hence if Democrats just allow him enough time, he'll collapse as if he's on the phone with Erdoğan. So hang tough, Mr. & Mrs. Congressional Democrat — and stick it to Trump with unwavering purpose.