Gov. Brad Little is so scared of his enemies that he can’t tell right from wrong. This time, he is wrong about sending Idaho State Troopers and money to Texas.
Why is that wrong? It’s expensive. It’s dangerous. It’s a crass political pantomime that attacks our nation’s unity by ignoring legal precedents in the US Constitution that were decided by the Civil War. It’s a quaking concession to anarchists on his political party’s far-right.
Perhaps Brad views his Tough-Talk-on-the-Border drama as a harmless farce. After all, it’s clearly just a charade for cameras and far-right cultists. Brad likely considers the whole event a success if he comes away with a photo taken beside such a brazen political creature as the Texas governor. It’s Brad playing dress up as a fierce culture warrior—instead of the mildly inept chap who hung around Idaho’s Capitol for decades hoping Butch Otter would eventually get bored and leave.
But this theatrical event is a spendy political production on the public dime. Brad spent $200,000 on last year’s run of the lamest border show on earth. Two-hundred-thousand dollars to do nothing, mind you, at least nothing good. Those Idaho taxpayer dollars backed that flop, clearly scripted to tickle the same far-right anarchists who elevated bad actors like Dorothy Moon to lead the Idaho Republican Party.
As bad as it is to waste taxpayer money, Brad is blithely rejecting foundational legal principles that have contributed to making our nation strong and prosperous.
Our nation’s laws are among those key ingredients that made the USA great enough to attract folks fleeing poverty and persecution. And, yes, our country is attractive to criminals too. But destroying prosperity and unity cannot be the solution to problems on our border. Clearly, Congress must act. And, as of this week, it looks like Republicans in Congress have decided that passing bi-partisan laws to fix border issues will take eyes away from the disaster show that Brad and his Texan co-producers have invested a ton of public dollars in.
So, Brad is giving us a show for our hard-earned money, an unoriginal one that really drags in the third act.
But as dull as it all is, it’s still causing real harm. Remember that our nation paid dearly—in blood and treasure—to settle this kind of Texas-line issue with a bloody Civil War. Among the ideas that the President Abraham Lincoln Administration refused to bend on was the unifying legal position that states did not have executive enforcement power over the federal government when it comes to national security and other issues of national importance.
The U.S. Supreme Court has just affirmed that position.
So while Brad joins the cast of a political farce, he is undermining the system of government that has made America great. Yes, I certainly agree that immigration laws must be updated and that the border needs to be fixed by serious minds and honest leaders. But, for the sake of our national unity and national success, that is for Congress to take up… not a motley band of political characters play-acting for rightwing media at the border.