This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I borrow this blog headline from one that ran in the Washington Post the other day.

It captures very well the status of the border immigration issue in Washington, D.C.

To Republicans, the southern border once was a crisis.  Now, to accede to Donald Trump’s inane wishes, the crisis no longer exists.

Trump’s wishes?

He wants the border to be an election issue for him.  If Congress does nothing, then he and his minions can blame President Joe Biden and, thus, they feel, win votes in the election.

So it was that Post Dana Milbank wrote about the status this way:

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“When House Speaker Mike Johnson invited President Biden to give his State of the Union address on the unusually late date of March 7, people were puzzled.

“Now, the mystery can be revealed.  House Republicans delayed the State of the Union so they could use the time to foment a state of disunion.

“After the Supreme Court last month sided with the Biden Administration in a dispute with Texas over border barriers, Texas Representative Chip Roy asserted that the high court’s order ‘is unconscionable and Texas should ignore it.’

“Never mind that two conservative justices joined in the order.  Roy suggested that an appropriate response would be to ’ell the court to go to hell.’”

Milbank then summarizes things this way:

“It’s not just words.  These dime-store confederates are actively sabotaging the government they serve — by blocking it from mounting an effective response to the historic surge of migrants along the southern border.

“Back in October, Biden requested $13.6 billion in emergency funding for border protection, including the hiring of 1,300 additional Border Patrol agents and 1,600 asylum officers, as well as more funds to counter fentanyl smuggling.  Because of Republicans’ objections, Congress still hasn’t approved a penny of it.

“And now, even as House Republicans wail about a ‘crisis’ and an ‘invasion’ at the border, they are mobilizing to kill a bi-partisan deal emerging in the Senate to reform asylum claims and to beef up border security — regarded as the toughest immigration legislation in decades.”

All of this underlines an unfortunate fact in Congress.  Representatives in the House are always running for re-election.  Seldom are they governing. 

To some observers, this has been called the “permanent campaign.”

More Milbank:

“Instead of declaring victory and embracing the legislation they have long demanded, House Republicans are moving to impeach the Administration’s lead negotiator on the proposal — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — on charges so flimsy they do not identify a crime of any kind.

“But this is the new standard.  The hysteria about a crisis along the border is matched only by a determination to do nothing about it.  Rather than solve the problem, they prefer to have an issue for the 2024 campaign.”

Note the phrase:  Rather than solve the problem, make it a campaign issue.

That approach by Republicans in the U.S. House strikes me as unconscionable.  They deserve to be repudiated for their inaction on such a pressing issue.