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September 14, 2017 02:45 PM UTC

Trump Makes Another Big Deal with Democrats

  • 6 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

President Trump keeps tipping his hand.

In the parlance of poker, you might also say that Congressional Democrats have “spotted his tell.”

Politico reports on the framework of a new immigration plan for DREAMERs negotiated by Trump and Democratic leadership:

President Donald Trump and Democratic congressional leaders reached a tentative agreement Wednesday night to provide a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants known as Dreamers — but after a conservative backlash, the president and his aides sent conflicting signals about how firm the agreement was.

After a meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday night, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi said they had come to terms with Trump on a plan that would provide protection for Dreamers in exchange for beefed-up border security — but, notably, no additional funding for a border wall.

“We all agreed on a framework: Pass DACA protections and additional security measures, excluding the wall. We agreed that the president would support enshrining the DACA protections into law,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Thursday.

The news triggered an outcry from the right, which accused Trump of abandoning his tough-on-immigration campaign stance. So Trump and his aides rebutted Democrats’ claims that an agreement had been struck — while at the same time acknowledging the outlines of a deal.

One week after negotiating a debt limit/disaster relief formula with Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did it again — this time on a legislative framework for DACA protections. House Speaker Paul Ryan says that there is no such deal, but that’s not the narrative coming out of the White House.

Trump supporters are absolutely furious that he would even shake hands with a Democrat, but those critics are missing something if they are just blindly painting Trump as a partisan traitor. Even though they are in the majority, Congressional Republicans haven’t been able to come to any agreement with Trump on much of anything. Republicans seem to be struggling to understand the new political reality of Washington D.C. and the new guy in the White House.

Meanwhile, Democrats might have cracked the code…

We all know that President Trump fancies himself to be a master negotiator, in large part because he tells us whenever he gets a chance. Being adept at negotiating deals is a fundamental part of Trump’s persona — and not just the act he displays in public. Trump desperately wants to show that he can “win” at being President, and he doesn’t really care who he has to work with in order to make that happen [cough, Russia, cough].

Schumer and Pelosi have smartly figured out that Trump wants to get to “yes” as quickly as possible — that he won’t get hung up on policy details at the risk of losing the sale. Trump also loves to get attaboys in the press, as he did earlier this month on the debt limit bill, and it’s hard to generate praise when nothing is getting accomplished in general.

Republicans could follow this same blueprint for dealing with Trump, but they can’t even come to an agreement amongst themselves.

Comments

6 thoughts on “Trump Makes Another Big Deal with Democrats

  1. Pols, I couldn't agree more with your analysis. What we are witnessing is the limit of ideology. Congressional Republicans, especially the Freedom Caucus, are ideologues. They constructed a system via the Hastert Rule in the House and the over use of the filibuster in the Senate when President Obama was in office to all but shutdown the legislative process. Trump was elected in large part to break that logjam.

    The Hastert Rule allows the Freedom Caucus to control the agenda in the House. They insist on their policy preferences and if the Republican leadership won't comply with their wishes, they refuse to support leadership and legislation dies because leadership continues, slavishly, to follow the Hastert Rule. That rule is akin to the old binding caucus rule in the Colorado General Assembly that allowed ten of the thirty-five senators and as few as eighteen out of sixty-five representatives to control what could pass the legislature. The voters changed the state constitution and outlawed that rule. The Hastert Rule should be consigned to the ash heap of history never to see the light of day again.

    The filibuster should be retained but sparingly used as was tradition until the Republicans decided to oppose President Obama on everything he supported.

    Congressional Republicans are only fooling themselves if they think the electorate supports their "our way or the highway" approach to legislation. The 2016 election results should tell them that. They lost two senate seats and a half dozen house seats. Not a stirring endorsement of how they've run the House and the Senate and certainly not a mandate for their ideology. If anything, it reflects the view that they are part of the problem.

    President Trump seems to sense all of this and he wants to get something done. I won't like what he wants to do but there is at least some satisfaction that, at least for the moment, he is moving to destroy the choke hold the ideologues have had on the legislative branch of government. Politico is reporting the Freedom Caucus is threatening to vote with the Democrats to kill any tax legislation. The ultimate satisfaction will come if the President and Rep. Pelosi compromise on a tax plan and the Democrats vote with Republicans to pass it out of the House and over to the Senate. At that moment, the fanatics in the Freedom Caucus will be out in the cold without influence along with their fanatical supporters. Maybe at that point they'll be willing to read, study, and reflect on the meaning of Federalist No. 10.

    Hopefully, government will begin to work again.

    1. Dennis Hastert, the former Speaker and namesake for the Hastert Rule, was released from custody August 16. He had completed 15 months in prison and a halfway house for his crimes. These included banking fraud in an attempt to get hush money to cover up multiple sexual molestations of teenagers, while he was a wrestling coach. He is now on probation, with the usual stipulations,including registering as a sex offender and completing a sex offender treatment program.

      So here you have a trifecta of malfeasance; Sexual exploitation of minors, corruption and mishandling of money, and breaking government as we know it in the US. Is this really the guy whose "Rule" Republicans want to follow?

      And – nice summation of the problem, R36.

      1. Folks, hide your pre-teen and teen-aged sons. Another conservative family values Republicans is getting out of prison.

        And remember….after Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston, this guy was considered to be an upgrade by the House GOP conference when it came to morals!

  2. A Deal with Trump? Right. And I've got a bridge I can sell you in Brooklyn.

    Trump doesn't do deals. He does dominance theater.

    Chuck and Nancy will find the football pulled out just as they get ready to kick it. Unless, maybe they pwn Trump first.

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