By Stephen Macaulay

It is somewhat like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze: it doesn’t bark.

The absence brings up presence. What should have happened doesn’t.

Which brings us to Mitch McConnell, who is still the leader of the Republicans in the Senate.

Back in February McConnell pushed a bipartisan immigration and foreign aid bill. 

Donald Trump had posted this on Truth Social about the bill that was to both tighten asylum standards and shut down the border if there was an influx of an unmanageable number of illegal crossings, both the sort of thing that would provide the “border security” that so many Trump and Trump-PAC ads are now shrieking about: “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill, which only gives Shutdown Authority after 5000 Encounters a day, when we already have the right to CLOSE THE BORDER NOW, which must be done.”

The bill was written, in part, by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), not a fool nor a “Radical Left Democrat.”

Lankford wrote of the bill, “Americans are not opposed to legal and orderly immigration, but they are tired of the chaos and abuse at our border.”

No one should argue against that. Or maybe people need to be reminded that we are a nation of immigrants.

Lankford went on to write:

“The border security bill will put a huge number of new enforcement tools in the hands of a future administration and push the current Administration to finally stop the illegal flow. The bill provides funding to build the wall, increase technology at the border, and add more detention beds, more agents, and more deportation flights. The border security bill ends the abuse of parole on our southwest border that has waived in over a million people. It dramatically changes our ambiguous asylum laws by conducting fast screenings at a higher standard of evidence, limited appeals, and fast deportation. 

“New bars to asylum eligibility will stop the criminal cartels from exploiting our currently weak immigration laws. The bill also has new emergency authorities to shut down the border when the border is overrun, new hiring authorities to quickly increase officers, and new hearing authorities to quickly apply consequences for illegal crossings. It changes our border from catch and release to detain and deport.” 

Remember: this is a conservative Republican (a real conservative, not the kind that have co-opted the ideology).

What’s not to like about that?

But Trump spoke, his acolytes listened, and McConnell, who had once been a force in the Senate — and in his party — wandered off in silence. Even though he is not running for reelection, even though he would have no political capital to lose by strongly voicing first his support then his concern, McConnell folded.

The reason Trump was against the bill was because if the border was at least somewhat “fixed,” he wouldn’t have one of his primary issues to rant, rave and inexplicably riff about.

So people fell into line and supported their liege.

Now arguably the bill has things in it that people don’t like, but the nature of developing legislation is — or it used to be — one of give-and-take and compromise. It is working to get the most of what you can get and to minimize the amount of what you don’t want, knowing full well that there are opposite numbers to your position trying to do the same thing from their points of view.

But at the end something — not nothing — results.

Or at least that used to be the way things worked before the House became not much more than something you might find on the grounds of a carnival and the Senate has gone from a “deliberative body” to one where people thinks the word “debate” is something that Herve Villechaize might have referenced in relation to fishing on Fantasy Island.

Now Trump has returned to directing Congress by saying that if the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act isn’t signed into law (it is essentially a law that says illegal aliens can’t vote in federal elections, which is actually something that noncitizens can’t do anyway, so if you’re all about reducing regulations and the size of government, enacting something that essentially repeats what’s already there is nothing but waste), then:

“I would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they don’t get it.”

Congress is going to have to actually do some work, or the government will be largely shut down on September 30. 

What Trump is saying, in effect, is that if the SAVE Act isn’t passed, then Congress shouldn’t do its job to keep the government running.

Here is the man who wants to lead the government who is saying that it should be shut down.

How does that make any sense?

It is all about him and what he wants. Never mind the rest of the people in the country he wants to represent. If he doesn’t get his way, then it is no way.

And there is either silence (McConnell) or fist-pumping support (Hawley, Jordan).

Trump clearly doesn’t understand that it isn’t about him, in large part because there are so many who either keep quiet or tell him that it is and pretend that it has something to do with making America great again.

It isn’t. It is simply giving him what he wants.