In case you missed it, Donald Trump is threatening to cut off Affordable Care Act subsidies unless Democrats agree to fund his Border Wall. The concern, of course, is that Donald's attempt at extortion might result in the federal government shutting down this Friday.
I am actually hoping the government shuts down. Yeah, I know -- none of the other shutdowns (or threats of shutdown) had much of a negative effect politically on the GOP. After all, Republicans still won everything in 2016 despite all their shutdown fuckery during the Obama years.
But as Josh Marshall pointed out yesterday, a shutdown in the current political climate would be different from any other: "[I]t simply never occurred to anyone before now that there would be a shutdown crisis when one party had unified control of the entire government still less that a President whose party controlled Congress would threaten to shut the government down to extort policy concessions from a party that controls nothing."
If I had to bet, I'd wager there would not be a shutdown. First of all, allowing one to occur would demonstrate beyond all doubt that the Republican Party is unable to govern even when it controls everything. Second, this whole border wall idea is unpopular, and I think even the GOP understands that going to the mat in support of an unpopular president's unpopular idea is bad politics. But whether Congressional GOP leaders will be able to convince Trump that it is a bad idea to shut down government over the issue of the border wall -- well, that's another story.
Trump seems to think the promise of a border wall was a big reason he won the election. But he promised more than a border wall. He also promised the Mexicans would pay for it, mainly because he knew it would be hard to convince American taxpayers -- even those who support him -- that they should pay for the wall. Granted, most Republicans are racists, but they are cheap racists who don't want to spend money on anything, even something that might hurt minorities.
So I guess whether the shutdown occurs depends almost entirely on how much Donald Trump bought into his own racist anti-Mexican bullshit. We'll have an answer to that question in about five days.
