Democrats Play Chicken with DACA Deal as Shutdown Looms

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders accused the Democrats Tuesday of punishing the American people with threats of a government shutdown, telling reporters that the party was unwilling to make the kinds of compromises necessary to get a budget bill on the president’s desk. In an interview with Fox News, Sanders said that President Trump was still hopeful that lawmakers would send him a clean budget bill and expressed the White House view that the budget legislation and the controversial DACA deal should be kept separate.

“We need to keep those two things separate,” Sanders said. “We’re still hopeful that we could get a budget deal done–a clean budget–by the end of this week, and certainly hope we can make a deal on DACA and on border security and our immigration system. This is something that needs to be done. Hopefully Democrats come to the table and really be serious about making a deal on both of these things that we want to get done.”

Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Sanders what issue was keeping Democrats from signing onto the bill.

“Sadly, I think it’s really simple,” Sanders said. “I think Democrats don’t want to see this president be successful. I think he’s had a huge year in 2017; one of the best first years of any president that we’ve seen. You have win after win after win with this president, and I don’t think they want to hand him another one.

“The problem is,” she continued, “what they’re doing is they’re penalizing the country, and that’s a really really sad thing. And hopefully Democrats will stop doing that and start putting their country before their party, and really focus on things they were elected to come here and do.”

Even at this late date, the Democrat leadership seems to be laboring under the belief that there is political hay to be gained by shutting down the government on behalf of illegal immigrants. Where they got that idea is beyond us, but you can bet that last week’s “shithole” controversy was all part of their master PR plan. They want to convince America that Trump is a racist and then use that argument to help them win the battle for Dreamer legislation. All we can say is, good luck. If the Democrats actually come out on top with this strategy, then we dramatically overestimated the median intelligence of our fellow Americans.