Why Trump Needs a Border Wall Shutdown Fight

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/opinion/trump-shutdown-border-wall-fight.html

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President Trump’s decision to hold firm on his demand for funding toward a border wall and allow the government to partly shut down is a recognition that he is going to sink or swim politically in 2020 by standing with his base.

It also suggests that, however tumultuous the previous two years were, this week is a taste of what’s to come and a sign that partisan warfare is going to get more fierce.

This week, the White House signaled that Mr. Trump was going to drop his demand for a border wall to keep the government open. But some of his most loyal conservative supporters unleashed a torrent of uncharacteristically harsh criticism. “Fox and Friends” hosts complained; Rush Limbaugh fumed; and Ann Coulter declared that without the wall she wouldn’t vote to re-elect Mr. Trump because he will have presided over a “joke presidency” and “scammed the American people.”

Though this wouldn’t have been the first time the president backed off demands for a border wall and agreed to government spending deals, this time there was an increased urgency among conservatives; Democrats are set to take control of the House of Representatives on Jan. 3. As Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and a leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus, framed it, “If we’re not going to fight now, when are we going to fight?”

According to a Quinnipiac poll, American voters opposed setting off a shutdown over border wall funding, 62 percent to 34 percent. But Republicans supported the move 59 percent to 33 percent. Poll results were not broken down further, but among Mr. Trump’s core supporters, enthusiasm for a border wall showdown was most likely even stronger.

President Trump, in other words, faced a classic political quandary of having to choose between his party’s base and the general electorate. His decision shows that he’s concluded his best path to re-election runs through appealing to his base. And he’s probably right.

Compared with that of other presidents, Mr. Trump’s approval rating is relatively inelastic, so there isn’t really an option of his winning over moderates by co-opting the message of his opponents, as Bill Clinton successfully did after Democratic losses in the 1994 midterms. Mr. Trump’s own unorthodox political rise has taught him that the road to victory lies in energizing a devoted group of supporters.

In 2016 he ignored the best advice of political experts who posited that Republicans could win in a demographically changing America only by toning down immigration rhetoric, and he won the presidency, victorious even in states Republicans hadn’t captured in decades. He accomplished this despite registering as the least popular major party nominee (winner or loser) since Gallup began measuring favorability in 1956.

Any window for Mr. Trump to govern from the center has long since closed. Attempting to pivot now will win him no new fans, and it will only alienate his most passionate supporters, depriving him of his biggest political asset just as the 2020 presidential election enters its preliminary stages.

There is no vow that defined Mr. Trump’s campaign more than his promise to build a border wall. If he is going to enter the campaign in the embarrassing position of not having fulfilled that pledge, at the very minimum he’s going to have to show that he exhausted every option at his disposal and fought for the wall tooth and nail. A high-profile government shutdown battle is a way to accomplish that.

Most likely, perhaps at some point after House Democrats take control, Mr. Trump will be forced to sign a bill without wall funding, as he will no longer have the votes for it in the House. Coming off a huge electoral victory, Democrats aren’t about to surrender and give Mr. Trump what would be the biggest victory of his presidency.

On Friday, the president was already setting the stage to deflect blame for any eventual capitulation he’ll have to make. He urged the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to use the “nuclear option” to allow Republicans to overcome a Democratic filibuster and pass legislation with a simple majority. This won’t happen, as Mr. McConnell has opposed such a course, and even if he wanted to pursue it, it isn’t even clear that there is a simple majority that would support it. But it signals where Mr. Trump is heading. He’ll eventually suck up the border wall loss and blame intransigent Democrats for not caring about border security as well as weak-kneed Senate Republicans who refused to pull the nuclear trigger.

Mr. Trump will spend the remainder of his first term trying to make up for the loss by appealing to his base in other ways. For example, he will confirm a flood of conservative federal judges, a job that will become easier in January thanks to Republican gains in the Senate. Additionally, with the 2020 Democratic field wide open, there’s a chance that Mr. Trump’s opponent will also be a polarizing figure — like Hillary Clinton in 2016 — setting the stage for a “base vs. base” election that he would relish.

It’s quite possible that his strategy of feeding the base will doom his chances of re-election, but at this point it’s the best play he has.

Philip Klein is the executive editor of The Washington Examiner.

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