Joseph Sabino Mistick: Border politics trump the national interest

It is clear now that some Republican members of Congress have a hard time taking “yes” for an answer. For years, during both the Trump and Biden administrations, they have demanded immigration reform — tighter border controls and asylum and parole procedures.

In October, Republicans felt so strongly about new border laws that they refused to support additional military funding for Ukraine unless Democrats agreed to their demands. Bolstering their commitment, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appointed conservative Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, known as a “border hawk,” to negotiate bipartisan legislation.

According to some of Lankford’s colleagues and himself, the deal gives the Republicans everything they wanted, including 1,300 new border agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers and new fentanyl detection technology. In other words, the Democrats said “yes” to the Republicans.

But now Lankford is taking fire from his fellow Republicans. Speaker Mike Johnson said the Senate bill would be “dead on arrival” in the House. Many others who clamored for what Lankford negotiated have flipped and become opponents of those same reforms.

They realize now that if things get better at the border, they may lose a big campaign issue against President Joe Biden. Likely presidential nominee Donald Trump has said as much, leading the charge against Lankford.

The prospect of an honorable solution to a glaring national problem being scuttled for pure political advantage is disappointing. Border towns will continue to be overrun, desperate families escaping violence will continue to breach the border, and bad guys and their contraband will keep making it across, too. But Trump will have his campaign issue.

This is not the first time we have seen partisan politics trump the national interest. In 1968, Richard Nixon was running against Hubert Humphrey for president. The Nixon campaign sent Washington socialite Anna Chennault to convince South Vietnam to scuttle the Vietnam peace talks, saying Nixon would get them a better deal after he won the election.

The South Vietnamese walked away from the table, and the Johnson administration, including Humphrey, could take no credit for ending the war. Nixon narrowly won the election and consistently denied involvement in the Chennault affair. But later discovered evidence tells a different story.

According to Nixon biographer John A. Farrell, Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman took notes during a late-night call from his boss before the election. Nixon told Haldeman, “Keep Anna Chennault working on (South Vietnam).” Later in the call, Nixon asked, “Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN (Richard Nixon) can do.”

And we hear President Johnson telling Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen on an October 1968 White House recording, “We could stop the killing out there. But they’ve got this new formula, namely wait on Nixon. And they’re killing four or five hundred every day waiting on Nixon.”

As Farrell wrote in Politico Magazine in 2018, if Nixon’s “election- eve skulduggery did extend the fighting — with its subsequent expansion into Cambodia — at the cost of another 20,000 American and millions of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese lives, then he and Chennault deserve a special lot of infamy, and a place in the history books, indeed.”

Lankford is a tough Republican conservative. His bill has been called “the toughest immigration bill ever.” It deserves the support of Republicans and Democrats alike. We should have learned long ago how dangerous it is to allow vital public policy to be hijacked and used as campaign fodder.