Calculation or Cave? Time Will Tell On Shutdown Agreement
Mark Davis
Posted: Jan 25, 2019 7:10 PM
If there’s anything the Trump presidency should have taught people in the opinion business, it is to pause before overreacting in the short term. As such, I will temporarily shelve my gut response to the arrangement that has been made to re-open the government.
I’ve spent the last few weeks warning that the Democrat lure—“Re-open the government, and then we’ll really, really negotiate in good faithâ€â€”is a trap that should be ignored. But then I’ve spent the last two years trusting that the President knows what he’s doing, an assumption that has held up well in most cases. I deployed it this week as he agreed to delay the State of the Union address, figuring he was engaged in the psychology of brief acquiescence in order to push even harder at the border bargaining table.
Well, apparently not just yet.
The President Friday agreed to a temporary funding measure that sends the suffering furloughed federal employees back to work, and he did it without receiving a dime of wall funding.
Social media exploded with characterizations of this as caving under pressure. Some were the laments of frustrated Trump supporters; others were the gleeful smirks of his detractors.
more
https://townhall.com/columnists/markdavis/2019/01/25/calculation-or-cave-time-will-tell-on-shut-down-agreement-n2540287
