Opinion

ELLIS: Schumer And Pelosi Fail To Sell Americans On An Open Border

(Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

Curtis Ellis America First Policies
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President Trump pushed the wall while Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer hit the ceiling.

That’s the short version of the dueling prime time television addresses.

The Democratic arguments for obstructing President Trump rather than the growing flood of migrants don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Let’s go through them one by one.

When Democrats say walls don’t work, they must be having a flashback on the Blue Wall that was supposed to protect Hillary in 2016, the one that Donald J. Trump breached in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio.

That as we know didn’t work at all.

But Nancy Pelosi says she wants another virtual wall. She says she’ll fund new technology and innovation. But a virtual wall won’t work any better on the southern border than the blue wall did around the Great Lakes.

Our source on this is that notorious alt-right publication, the Washington Post. The kooks at the Post report that the government’s attempt in 2006 to build 28 miles of a high-tech virtual border wall known as SBInet, Secure Border Initiative Net, using sensors, radar and cameras failed miserably.

In all fairness, SBInet did succeed in transferring a billion tax dollars to a defense contractor whose employees gave generously to Democratic candidates this last cycle.

The Government Accountability Office declared, “Had the money spent on SBInet been spent instead on building a wall on the border, it could have covered 73 miles.”

It’s not like the Democrats don’t know about this. Former Democratic Rep. Dave Obey of Wisconsin helped expose the high-tech border wall boondoggle when he chaired the appropriations committee the last time Nancy Pelosi was speaker.

But instead of relying on the record, the facts and her failing memory, Nancy Pelosi stubbornly clings to the fantasy of a Star Wars force field at the border.

Nancy and Chuck kept saying the wall is ineffective wasteful and unnecessary. Which may be the first time in history Democrats worried about wasting taxpayers’ money. Then-Speaker Pelosi didn’t ask Boeing to give taxpayers back the $1 billion wasted on the virtual border wall that never worked.

Rep. Jerold Nadler, the new chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said nothing after we gave somewhere between $50 billion to $150 billion, including $1.7 billion in cash, to Iran following his vote to approve the Iran nuclear deal.

When it comes to effectiveness, real, as opposed to virtual, walls have a pretty good record despite what the anti-wall dead-enders want us to believe. I direct your attention to any number of embassies, consulates (including one in Benghazi), federal buildings and private homes, including President Obama’s, that have walls.

One reason we’re supposed to believe walls don’t work is — get ready for this — they are old, really old! This is, like, so age-ist! I mean, Chuck Schumer is old, but he works. Sometimes I wish he didn’t, but it’s not because he’s old.

I understand some Americans have a cult-like belief that anything new is automatically better. That’s why we buy the latest smartphone and will tell Alexa to turn the microwave on even though she may be reporting everything we say to Jeff Bezos. Call me old fashioned, but I know my stockade fence does a great job keeping people off my lawn, and the law requires me to have a fence around my pool to keep kids from drowning.

Then there’s the appeal to morality. Nancy says a wall doesn’t honor our values and declares it is “an immorality.” This is coming from the same person who doesn’t want government lecturing us about the morality of what her constituents are doing on the streets and between the sheets in San Francisco.

If I want a lecture on morality, I’ll call my preacher, not a member of Congress. We can debate whether the pope is infallible on matters of faith and morals, but there’s no question politicians aren’t. These are the same folks best remembered for hiding cash in the freezer, taking bribes in FBI sting operations and selling their votes and influence to the highest bidder.

Politicians are best known for being all talk and no action, and Chuck Schumer is all in on that count.

He said we can re-open the government and continue the debate over border security — for another 30 years!

The Democrats hit the wall with their arguments. And they were stopped.

Curtis Ellis is senior policy adviser with America First Policies. He was a senior policy adviser with the Donald J. Trump campaign.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.