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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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As to whether or not the package is a trap, I can't see any reason the Democrats would support this unless it furthered their objective of increasing migration.

This is your brain on relentless negative partisanship. "The enemy is agreeing with me!?! It must be a trap!!!"

Remember when the Democrats agreed to tough-on-crime policies in the 90s, despite formerly being the party that wanted to lessen crime penalties? Many issues aren't black and white, where one party supports 0 and the other party supports infinity. If both sides support some finite number, with one side's number simply being less than the other side's, then there's no contradiction if the status quo's number is far higher than what both would prefer, that both sides would agree to bring it down. For a more pessimistic take, it's possible that the side supporting a higher amount realizes that the status quo is too high and is thus costing them politically. In other words, they might prefer the status quo if they could have it for free, but they judge that the ongoing cost isn't worthwhile. That's what was going on back in February with the compromise deal. It's how the Democrats got to supporting much more stringent immigration restrictions without supporting any sort of amnesty, which had been a feature of basically every immigration compromise prior.

The resurrected bill could be another attempt by Democrats to defray the costs, or it could simply be grandstanding if they know Republicans will shoot it down again. Then they can say they tried to crack down on the border multiple times but Republicans (Trump) wouldn't let them.

The fact that the Democrat president singlehandedly increased the number to the current level seems to imply that their goal isn't to decrease it.

Remember when the Democrats agreed to tough-on-crime policies in the 90s, despite formerly being the party that wanted to lessen crime penalties?

Depending on how you look at it, it was either a trap or a compromise that gave a lot to the Democrats while giving a little bit to the Republicans.s