By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Donald Trump’s election as president was attributed at least partly to many people being fed up with the old, failed system. But the old way of doing things seemed as tasty as ever to some politicians cooking up their plans and programs once the midterm elections had passed.
Arizona’s newly elected U.S. senator whose pedigree was radical left, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, had campaigned as a bipartisan moderate who rejected old warhorses like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.).
On July 3 Politico headlined that if she were elected senator, Sinema flatly said she wouldn’t vote for Schumer as party leader. Politico said she was staking her “surprisingly strong campaign” on such elements as “a distaste for the Democratic leader.”
But hardly had the victorious Sinema arrived in Washington, D.C., in November than Schumer was chosen by acclamation to retain his Senate post. Sinema shrugged that no one else was running for Schumer’s job, so what could she do?
A columnist for The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest daily, quickly recalled that in Sinema’s victory speech, she had lauded the example of the late Sen. John McCain, “fighting for what you believe in, standing up for what’s right even if you stand alone.”
So, moderate-liberal columnist Laurie Roberts said, “if you repeatedly say on the campaign trail that you’re going to do something — like, say, not vote for Schumer — then you ought to keep your promise — like, say, by standing up and objecting to his being elected by acclamation.”
Meanwhile, Democratic tricksters who campaigned to win seats in the U.S. House with pledges to oppose the highly unpopular Californian Nancy Pelosi for a new term as speaker seemed to be coming up short while Pelosi charted her course for victory in a full public vote on the House floor on January 3.
The conservative Washington Free Beacon site reported on November 28 that Pelosi “won the Democratic Caucus’ nomination to be the next speaker of the House” amid maneuvering.
She deployed her inducements to get people in line, even though some had said they opposed her.
President Trump received some good news on November 27 when Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith easily kept her Mississippi seat in a runoff election, boosting the GOP’s majority in the upper chamber to 53 members.
Still, the Democrats won control of the U.S. House in the midterms with an above-normal pickup of 40 seats, which isn’t in line with Trump’s aspirations to bring Republican transformation to the nation. There always can be electoral setbacks, but now the national GOP has a bigger hole to try to dig out of in 2020.
When Trump’s successful policies were having a positive effect on the nation, political observers had wondered if his bluster would help or hurt him and his party. Was he simply showing the assertiveness expected of a powerful leader, or did he seem to be picking fights needlessly?
While Trump’s strong supporters at his big campaign rallies didn’t seem offended in the least, voters with less investment in his personality broke for the Democrats — even though analysis showed the Dems to be at odds with the U.S.’s well-being.
Conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on November 28 that Trump should adjust his message for swing voters.
“Elections are decided by turning out your base and winning the swing voters,” Querard said. “Trump’s base remains extremely loyal and he will be well served by tailoring his message to swing voters. That means highlighting accomplishments and pursuing policies that appeal to suburban voters, particularly women voters.”
Still, voters in the Republican camp started to wonder if the GOP could ever get its act together on protecting the international line, even though a horde of violent “migrants” had just tried to storm their way into the United States from Tijuana by throwing dangerous rocks at border agents and clawing at the fence in broad daylight. U.S. agents replied with defensive use of tear gas.
Critics who would try to portray rocks as pebbles should be asked if they’d ever heard of someone being stoned to death in the Bible.
The National Border Patrol Council’s Art Del Cueto told Phoenix radio talk host James T. Harris (KFYI, 550 AM) on November 26 that some migrants waiting in Tijuana said, “We want war,” and if they’re not allowed to enter the U.S., they’ll come in anyway.
Although Trump had significantly powered his presidential campaign by pledging to “build the wall,” he’d had trouble corralling necessary support ever since — not from the voters but from Congress.
A woman calling Rush Limbaugh’s national radio program on November 28 said she and fellow Trump supporters were growing restive over this failure and feared it could imperil his re-election race in 2020.
The Washington Times reported on November 28, “The House has already passed a Homeland Security spending bill with $5 billion in wall-building money included. But Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who has some leverage thanks to the Senate filibuster, says he’s not ready to budge from the $1.6 billion Senate negotiators, both Republican and Democrat, agreed to in their bill earlier this year.”
The Wanderer asked conservative political consultant Querard about reports that thousands more Latino marchers would be arriving near the border so that they could charge the line en masse.
Querard replied: “The border fight must be won by those insisting on secure borders and the rule of law, because if a high-profile effort featuring 7,000 people succeeds, it will be followed by not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands.
“It will be interesting to see if use of force can be largely avoided, but I don’t know how else to physically stop hundreds or thousands of people trying to overrun your position,” he added.
Around the San Diego area there actually is a high protective barrier, unlike along much of the long border, where the alleged fence may be no more than a few strands of barbed wire that any critter could hop past.
Does a robber try to steal from victims on the steps of the police station, or in a dark alley?
If the potential crossers were so determined to ignore U.S. law, they’d likely have more success to the east, at lightly defended spots in the shadows than in the sunlight in the center of the Tijuana-San Diego metropolitan area.
Of course, there’d be no row of fast-food shops to welcome them quickly in the middle of the desert, but forgoing immediate French fries seemed like a small sacrifice after one has walked or ridden a thousand miles to slip into the U.S.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) told Fox & Friends on Fox News that an entire wall should be built in order to have effective security. Just building part of the wall, he said, would be like building a house with a second story but not a first.
Stressing that the U.S. traditionally is a welcoming nation, Rubio, himself the son of immigrants, said there have to be limits and controls of people’s movements for them “to access generosity” here — in a similar way, he said, that the TSA at an airport isn’t to prevent people from flying but to funnel and monitor them for safety.
Barack Obama’s administration repeatedly had used tear gas at the border, but Obama’s media admirers weren’t concerned with those incidents.
A Fox graphic during the Rubio interview showed the Obama government using tear gas at the border a total of 79 times between 2012 and 2016, with the highest use of 27 times in 2013, and the lowest, 3, in 2016.
Although the large majority of Central American “migrants” at the recent Tijuana incident were adult males, some women and children among them were shoved forward as shields. In familiar hysterical fashion, dominant media seemed to spin that Trump law-enforcers were searching out women and children as targets for tear gas, rather than that they unintentionally were caught up in the chaos.
Opinion writer Victor Joecks at the Las Vegas Review-Journal was among conservatives calling attention to media’s double standard for Trump and Obama.
“When Trump is president, tear-gassing children is cruel, hateful, inhumane, and the biggest story of the week. When Obama was president, it wasn’t even news,” Joecks posted on November 27.
And Siraj Hashmi posted at the Washington Examiner on November 28: “The use of non-lethal force to police the border is not a Trump administration innovation. Under the Obama administration, Border Patrol used non-lethal projectiles like pepper balls, ‘kinetic impact’ rubber bullets, and sting-ball grenades.
“The type of outrage you see today under the Trump administration was almost nonexistent under the Obama administration. It’s a similar story to when outlets used photos of detention centers from 2014 to criticize the Trump administration’s child-separation policy,” Hashmi added.
Inconsistent Stereotypes
Moreover, dominant media once again couldn’t get their stereotypes straight. If women are being sent into military combat, they’re strong, capable, and resourceful, and they need to be separated from their children left back in their hometowns.
But if they’re among hordes of chaotic border-jumpers, females are fragile and vulnerable and need to have their toddlers with them.
Catholic blogger Mary Ann Kreitzer posted at her Les Femmes — The Truth site on November 26 that leftists weeping over non-lethal tear gas affecting children are just fine with fatal chemicals being used to kill preborn infants.
“Hey, with the Left it’s A-Okay to inject digoxin into a baby’s heart or attack him with RU-486 or any other number of lethal drugs to kill him directly,” Kreitzer said. “But using non-lethal tear gas or pepper spray for mob control is a crime against humanity! It’s time to recognize them for what they are: socialists who hate God and hate the United States and the principles on which she was founded.”
Almost exactly 12 years ago, a December 12, 2006, Associated Press story datelined Tucson noted increasing attacks on Border Patrol agents in southwestern Arizona, including rocks and flammable liquids.
A Border Patrol spokesman was quoted that smugglers were trying to get agents out of their way so they could “get back to business as usual.”
The story noted recent attacks with baseball-sized rocks, flammable liquids, and rocks wrapped in gasoline-soaked rags then set afire.
As was seen recently in San Diego, the AP in 2006 also noted agents’ vehicles being fitted with metal cages or louvres over windshields as protection.
Fleeing Violence
A woman in northern San Diego, who lives more than 30 miles from Tijuana, told The Wanderer on November 28 that although she was following events in the dominant local newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, she hadn’t had any direct contact with the unrest.
“One man said he thought he’d be in the U.S. and working by now, but he misses his wife and very young children and will return (southward). Another man said he and his family fled from Guatemala when gang members threatened them with death after he refused to pay extortion money,” the San Diego resident said, adding:
“A woman said she didn’t join the Sunday border-storming because she’d fled violence, and didn’t want to engage in it anymore.
“The above-fold four-column photo this morning shows a woman and her child watching another person’s cell phone. Okay, apparently people fleeing poverty and violence have cell phones. (If I sound cynical here, it’s because I am),” she said.
“This is pretty much what I’ve gleaned from the Union-Tribune over the days, and the Internet — which, of course, is hellbent on portraying Trump as the devil in all this, ignoring the fact that the Obama administration used tear gas frequently,” she said.
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