By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
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On Monday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a speech in which he urged his fellow Republicans to support the bipartisan border security bill. In that speech, McConnell insisted that “this is a humanitarian and security crisis of historic proportions.” He explained that three months earlier he had deputized Sen. James Lankford to lead efforts to address this crisis and praised the resulting bill, which provides both border security and military assistance to American allies.
Three hours later, behind closed doors, McConnell urged Republicans to vote against the legislation. According to Punchbowl News, McConnell insisted that the problem wasn’t in the bill that Lankford negotiated, it was that the “political mood in the country has changed.”
Meaning that despite working months to get exactly what they demanded, they’re going to throw it away. For Donald Trump.
Since Republicans took control of the House following the 2022 midterm elections, they’ve insisted that any military assistance to Ukraine be paired with a border security bill. They laid out a sweeping set of demands, including making it tougher to meet the requirements for an initial asylum assessment and turning more people back at the border. They’ve fearmongered about “military-age males” crossing the border.
That’s what’s in the bill. It’s exactly what’s in the bill: Turning back single men. Toughening the entry requirements. Reducing the processing of asylum seekers from years to under six months. It’s all in there.
Now Republicans are sending it back.
How utterly feckless is their position? This fecking much. Following the Republican meeting on Monday night, Lankford refused to say that he would support the bill he negotiated. The same bill he’s been loudly defending for weeks. Here’s Lankford just 24 hours ago.
The key aspect of this, again, is are we, as Republicans, going to have press conferences and complain the border’s bad and then intentionally leave it open after the worst month in American history in December?
Now we know the answer. Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. In fact, they’re going to do more than that. Republicans are going to come out on Tuesday, shut down the border bill that they negotiated and which gives them exactly what they claimed they wanted, and at the same time they’re going to vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to be tougher on the border. The level of hypocrisy should be toxic, but Republicans in Congress are protected by a superpower: a complete lack of morality.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Ukrainian troops are being forced to withdraw from a city they have defended for months because they are simply out of ammunition to hold back the Russians. And we won’t meet their desperate need.
Republicans’ price for allowing America to assist Ukraine with a tiny fraction of our military hardware was supposed to be getting tough on the border, even if that meant that thousands of people who desperately need to escape oppression and threats of violence are turned away from the United States. Then they got that deal and turned it down, which only reinforces the idea that you should never bargain with terrorists.
Why would anyone ever seek to negotiate with Senate Republicans, on any topic, ever again?
At least when someone is venal, they expect a payoff. These Republicans aren’t even that. They’re sub-venal. Spineless. Gutless. Cowed. They’re the party of chickenshit. And they have blood on their hands.
Right now, around the world, America’s allies are seeing that we are fundamentally unreliable in a crisis. Right now, America’s enemies are breathing out a sigh of infinite relief. And in Ukraine, and Taiwan, and in both Israel and Gaza, they’re realizing that the United States—the United States that has been there for a century—has exited, stage right.
These guys aren’t just pleasing Trump. They’re setting the world ablaze. And they don’t even know why.
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