A shutdown to nowhere

The hope of achieving major policy goals via a government shutdown usually involves a huge dollop of wishful thinking. This time is no different.

President Trump wants to come out the other end of this (very) partial shutdown with substantially more funding for a border wall, but everything is set up for a disappointment.

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The first rule for winning a government-shutdown battle is not to take responsibility for the shutdown, which Trump did in his Oval Office confrontation with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer a week or so ago. Having gone on the record about how proud he’d be to shut down the government over border security, his subsequent attempts to blame the Democrats have gotten no traction (even if the Democrats are, indeed, wholly recalcitrant on the wall).

Party unity is necessary to weathering a shutdown fight and the congressional GOP leadership is unenthused, at best, over Trump’s tactics over the last few days.

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