The Art of the DACA Deal

Democrats announced last night that they have reached a deal with President Trump on illegal immigration -- DACA -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Trump didn't say a word.

Fools rush in.

Looks like someone was awful quick to get its spin out there.

So what is going on?

To find that answer, let us look at the previous announcement by Democrats that they forced President Trump to cut a deal on the debt ceiling. The people who hate Trump immediately jumped on that one and said he was caving -- selling his supporters out.

From Jonah Goldberg:

The news that President Trump abandoned Republicans to strike a deal with congressional Democrats on a three-month extension of the debt limit yielded a predictable response from his predictable cheerleaders: It was brilliant and typically shrewd for the author of The Art of the Deal to take the very first offer the Democrats made and ask for nothing in return. 

Less obsequious observers on the right claimed that this was the long-prophesied moment. The seventh seal had been broken. Donald Trump was “pivoting” at last. “The pivot is real and it’s spectacular!” proclaimed Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist. 

In the lexicon of Trumpism and anti-Trumpism, “pivot” has many meanings. But in this context, pivot means to reach across party lines and work with Democrats, giving the shaft to his own party, or at least to the conservatives in the GOP.

Such a move has been feared by many conservatives from the earliest days of Trump’s candidacy. The former New York Democrat holds no deep love for ideological conservatism, and many of his favorite issues — protectionism, infrastructure, etc. — are more naturally part of the Democratic portfolio.

This is the thinking in Washington. I thank Jonah Goldberg for his explanation. But bear in mind, Trump can do nothing right in the eyes of Never Trumpers. They want him to fail. The more they holler, the better I feel because they howl in pain.

Now we have to understand a few things.

Domenech signed off on that ineffectual "Against Trump" issue, which was a last minute attempt to stop history.

Its desperation (coming just before the Iowa Caucus) informed me that I indeed should proceed at full speed to write,"Trump the Press," which covered the nomination process.

But Domenech has come around while Goldberg hasn't.

Goldberg's history is flawed when he assigns infrastructure to Democrats.

Lincoln gave us transcontinental railroads and land-grant colleges, as well as the Homestead Act. If he had served more than five weeks of his second term, who knows what greatness he might have achieved.

Our Roosevelt gave us the Panama Canal.

Coolidge gave us the Hoover Dam, or at least began funding it.

Eisenhower gave us interstate highways and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

But what struck me about Goldberg's piece -- and he goes on to rail about Trump stabbing Republicans in the back -- was how over-the-top his objections were.

The disproportionate reaction informed me that it is being read in Washington far differently than it is in Poca, West Virginia.

So now I must pay attention and find out why it is important.

This was a minor agreement. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell wanted an 18-month delay on a debt ceiling vote. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer wanted a 3-month delay. Most Republicans voted for it as it passed the House 316-90, and the Senate 80-17.

This truly was a bipartisan effort.

Conrad Black put this in perspective:

As usual with President Trump’s more imaginative moves, the arrangement with the Democratic congressional leaders to defer the debt-ceiling issue for three months and pass hurricane relief at once was a more important step than it appears. The key element of it is that he has moved to higher and more defensible political ground. Since his inauguration, the president has been slugging it out with the Democratic congressional leadership, who promised and have delivered “scorched earth” and mindless obstructionism, while the House Republican leadership pompously imagined that it held the balance of power and would determine whether to drop the president like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s famous “hot rock” or play along with him. Apparently oblivious to the total immersion they were giving themselves in public disrepute by failing to do anything while the country is screaming for action in every policy area, the Republican congressional majorities conducted what looked like a fractious work-to-rule. They collected their pay and their perquisites with clockwork precision, but they didn’t do anything. They held the balance between their president and the other side of their branch of government, they thought.

In short -- and Black never writes short -- Ryan and McConnell thought that if President Trump needed something from Congress, he had to go through them.

As Gomer Pyle said, "Surprise, surprise."

Which explains all the angst about the deal, which on the surface is no big deal. But in Washington turf matters more than money; President Trump crossed the aisle.

This was his plan all along. Black knows him.

But timing is everything in politics and comedy, and so our second show business president waited patiently for his moment.

Wrote Black:

Doesn’t anyone get it? McConnell and Ryan don’t hold the balance of power between the administration and the Democrats, and it isn’t a matter of a durable and late “pivot” by the president. His accusers have fallen on their faces and he is prepared to go easy on the Democrats if they will work with him in policy areas, especially tax reform, which he is bringing on now. He couldn’t have pivoted earlier, when the Democrats thought they could impeach him and were listening to the lunatics in Hollywood and the media. As the mood deescalates and the system finally starts to work, he will hold the balance of power between the congressional parties and factions, and he will use it.

Donald Trump is not the person pivoting.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are. And in response, and out of necessity, so are the Republicans.

This bodes well for the nation, and therefore President Trump.

I can see why that would upset those who want him to fail.

So now we have Democrat saying they reached a deal with President Trump on amnesty for illegal aliens.

President Trump has not said a word.

That is odd.

Or rather, that is expected because it is the Democrats who need to cut a deal, not President Trump. He does not have to grant amnesty to anyone. There is no law that compels him to do so.

He just gave Congress six months to pass such a law before he cracks down on the illegal aliens who Barack Obama protected.

Democrats are testing the water.

They want to see if they can convince him that Trump supporters are OK with this.

That would be a pretty big thing for President Trump to give up.

So what is it Democrats are giving up in return? Democrats are not saying, and reporters aren't asking.

The president's critics would have you believe that Donald Trump -- who wheeled and dealed his way to a multi-billion-dollar fortune -- sold out for three magic beans.

Trump's silence tells me President Trump is in charge. All the noise he has made for the past two years now amplifies his silence.

I have been calling his distractions a distraction for quite a while, as behind the scenes regulations are repealed, judges appointed, and bureaucracy is cut. There is a madness to his method, which is quite entertaining -- particularly when he gets the media to run around with its hair on fire.

What will happen on DACA? We shall see, but I think we already know this will not end well for his critics.

***

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