The Senate border deal may be a dud, but it is also a political blunder that can only help President Joe Biden blame Republicans for a crisis that he alone created.
The border deal includes bailouts for sanctuary cities that invite illegal immigration and gives Biden more avenues for catch-and-release policies that Biden has already been abusing. It also gives Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the ability to ignore various restrictions, which is what the two have already been doing with existing immigration laws.
The mistake that Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and other Senate Republicans appear to have made in this negotiation is the assumption that Biden and congressional Democrats were good-faith negotiators. This mistake should have been made clear with the smears of Border Patrol agents and the repeated claims that the border crisis was not a crisis up until Biden’s terrible poll numbers on the topic started becoming more glaring.
It also should have been made clear by Biden’s repeated claims that he needed some new authority or legislation to secure the border, as if he didn’t tear up successful policies as soon as he walked into the Oval Office or thinks that crossing the border illegally is allowed under current immigration laws. The problem with offering this weak deal that gives Biden all the carveouts he could want, then, is that it helps feed into his narrative that he needed a new law to do exactly what he has been doing.
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The strategy from here is going to be fairly straightforward. Biden will blame “MAGA Republicans” for tanking the deal that he will defend as having been negotiated by other Republicans. He will then say that the crisis is not his fault, but the GOP’s, because now he is just oh so powerless to secure the border without this bill. Biden and his team had already been trying to blame the crisis on Republicans for not negotiating. Now, by offering a weak deal that was inevitably going to face resistance from other Republicans, Biden has been given the best out he could receive.
Whether it works or not is anyone’s guess right now, but this is the best gift Biden could ask for, given that he has no intention of securing the border. Short of actually doing his job, using the failure of this bad deal as a scapegoat is Biden’s best bet to deflect blame toward the GOP and away from his own failures. Republicans should have had the Biden administration over a barrel for these negotiations, and instead, Biden gets to keep doing what he was already doing while being given the excuse he wanted to defend it. This is a mind-numbing failure for the GOP.