This week, Republican party showed itself willing to snag defeat from the jaws of victory first by putting a “bipartisan” plan to bail out Joe Biden out of a jam and gave him cover for his  immigration woes with a bad bill that allows close to 1.9 million illegals over the next year, which is more than what we do legally.  Republicans not only committed bad politics but bad policies that will give cover to Biden while in the long run do nothing to stem the illegal immigration. 

RNC is disarray with ten months left until the election and so far the Republicans are being outraised by the Democrats, and Democrats outstrip the GOP with money on hand but then GOP had a choice last year to change direction at the RNC but chose to stand pat and one person who supported RNC pat was Donald Trump who now wants McDaniel out.  There are state party organization like Arizona and Michigan in disarray, which will impact GOTV.   

Meanwhile, one of the worst Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who simply decided not to enforce immigration laws, was not impeached by Congress and three Republicans supported Mayorkas. 

 Makes you wonder sometimes why have Republicans? 

The GOP descent began with the removal of Kevin McCarthy and Thomas Massie noted, “Getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster. All work on separate spending bills has ceased. Spending reductions have been traded for spending increases. Warrantless spying has been temporarily extended. Our majority has shrunk.”

Ronna McDaniel will step down after the South Carolina primary and Trump will attempt to get one of his guys or gals to run the party. (Trump did endorse McDaniel )  Ronna had the longest reign as the chief since Mark Hanna who reigned from 1896 to 1904 and might add the RNC won three straight Presidential election.  As for Ronna, the GOP had 52 Senators, 246 Representatives and 4,205 state legislatives for 57 percent of the seats. Now there are 49 Senators, 219 House representatives and 4022 state legislators for 54% of the seats.  And Republicans go into the 2024 election cycles with just eight million dollars available.

Jim Geraghty stated, “A major factor in all this is that House Speaker Mike Johnson is attempting to placate the erratic political desires of one guy down in Mar-a-Lago, instead of living with the reality of the extremely limited consensus among the 218 other guys in his caucus. This is what happens when the primary criterion for leadership within the Republican Party is public loyalty to Donald Trump, rather than competence, discipline, judgment, or strategic thinking.”  It is more than just loyalty to Donald Trump since even Andrew McCarthy, who is not a Trump supporter, viewed the border immigration bill as bad and should be rejected. It goes beyond loyalty to Trump but Republicans simply don’t know what kind of Party they want to be.   

As one pundit noted, The House counter to Biden on the border should be simple. Could almost do it in a one sentence bill. “Give the president Title 42-style authority to shut the border without triggers or limits. Take it or leave it.”    Steven Hayward added, “House Republicans already passed an immigration control bill last year, the Secure the Border Act of 2023. It calls for building a border wall, scaling back the grounds for asylum, and instituting employment verification measures. The Senate has not voted on it. Maybe the media should be asking why.”

Speaker Johnson simply should send to the Senate the Secure the Border Act of 2023 back to the Senate and tell them, border security of our southern border take priority. 

From this point, the Republican in Congress should worry less about reaching across the aisle and simply design a plan to win the election and govern afterwards. 

Ever get the feeling that whole world is going straight to hell?  Well, if you don’t I don’t blame you but there are some interesting things that could easily get out of control.   Right now, Ukraine is at stalemate with Russia, Middle East could easily spin out of control as Israel is finishing Hamas in Gaza, but Houthis are striking at shipping in the Red Sea and Hezbollah threatens Israel northern border and our own soldiers have been under attack in the Middle East and three have died. 

Our southern border is a sieve and who knows what terrorist have come across the border, putting a fifth column ready to strike as needed.

I have detailed a GOP foreign policy of modest foreign policy to defend our national interest but for the moment, we have a foreign policy in disarray.  Beginning the first day, Biden opened up the border and his pull out of Afghanistan and how it was done set the tone for his administration.  Before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden made a statement that it would depend upon Putin’s objective and he repeated a limited invasion as in 2014, he could live with it.  Putin took both the Afghanistan debacle and this statement as a sign he could get away with the invasion.

As Putin discovered, Biden had no choice but the respond after it became apparent that Ukraine would survive the initial shock and awe Russian campaign and now he faces a renewed NATO alliance, in particular the countries bordering Russia including Finland, Poland, and the Baltics. 

As for the Middle East Biden initial support for Israel has diminished and he is looking for a way to force Israel in a two-state solution to appease his anti-Jewish Democrats supporters which turned out to be more numerous as thought.   As for Ukraine, I suspect that Biden would love a cease fire and be willing to settle with a splitting of Ukraine into a Russian section and Free Ukraine.

As for the borders, Biden is hoping to sucker the Republicans with a compromise that will allow a significant number of illegals coming across the border for what will prove to be cosmetic changes and will be ignored by the Biden administration.

The Biden administration began with the following:

1. Reverse everything that Trump did even if it was good like the Abraham accord and border security.
2. He revived the Iranian deal that will allow Iranian the bomb and become a major player in the Middle East and move our policy away from support of Israel. He simply refunded the Iranian with billion of dollars.  We know how that works now.
3. Revive the Paris climate accord.
4. China policy resembled the weak policy of the Obama administration just as the Iranian policy resembled the Obama administration.
5. Attempted to restrict our energy policy.

The Biden administration foreign policy has been a disaster but look for the following:

1. Attempt to force Israel’s to do a two-state solution and allow the survival of Hamas.
2. Work to get a deal with Russian for a split Ukraine but the real question what guarantees will Ukraine get for security. If there is a demilitarized Ukraine, then there will be another war in the future.
3. Border compromise to allow significant numbers of immigrants crossing the border.

China invading or even blockading Tawain is the next shoe to drop and if that happens then all bets are off for any stability.