I use Lindsay Graham as the dipstick in the Trump engine (yes, I deliberately chose that analogy so I could call Graham dipstick).

Graham was originally scathing in his hatred towards Trump. Graham is a very funny man, and he unleashed on Trump:

2015: "Donald Trump gets his foreign policy from watching television - the Cartoon Network."

2015: “You know how you make America great again? Tell @realDonaldTrump to go to hell”

etc.

But dissing Trump caused a backlash in Graham's home state, and he started hearing about it, so he flipped and now vies to be Trump's #1 fanboy.

This will only last as long as Trump is popular with the base, a slackening of support will see Graham, and many like him, flip back and the knives will come out.

Zero interest in Stig's mom. He shared that piece of maternal wisdom with me in the previous blog to justify his disputing my characterization of a Huffpo article as "kinda long", without him having ever read it!

why are you so interested in stifler's i mean stig's mom? ah, pie.

JL

I'm betting your mom would say that's more "Big You and Little Me", or was sit the other way about?

Trump's wall is only popular with Trump's base. It's THE litmus test for them, but they are only about 40% of voters. Trump's wall is fundamentally unpopular. Moreover, support for the wall is regional, and in the wrong part of the Electoral College Map from Trump's point of view.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/12/upshot/13up-newwall1-1547248776737/13up-newwall1-1547248776737-facebookJumbo.png

So, the Democrats should rejoice and let Trump fight his unpopular crusade. Keep it in The News, by keeping up the oversight process, but let Trump embrace his tar baby as much as he wants. Plenty of other parties will be happy to skirmish with Trump in the courts, acting as forced draft to the fire.

Switching analogies here, Trump has stepped in bear trap. The only way out of the Trap is to gnaw his leg off by alienating his own base.

Cruel, but effective....and that's not the only problem that Trump has to worry about. Some of his own supporters in the Senate and House are going to start working the math.

I'm not so sure about that. A case could be made that it is a much bigger question that that. That Trump is trying to usurp for the presidency a specific power that is mandated by the constitution itself to be exclusive to Congress. Namely, that of allocating and distributing federal funds for a specific purpose. By design, the one crucial way for one branch of government to provide a check on the power of another branch of government and prevent tyranny or dictatorship. In other words, a violation of the separation of powers doctrine in defiance of the very structure of the government itself as spelled out by the constitution.

I think that the Democrats threatening to use this weapon (e.g. your list of potential "emergencies" last week) is likely to backfire at the polls in 2020, so should be left out of all future discussion - let the Republicans wet themselves about that scenario.

Who knows how this Supreme Court will rule - but let's hope they take a long time over it - if I were Roberts I'd try to stall this past November 2020 if I could.