When Donald Trump announced his campaign for the presidency, it came with one central promise upon which the rest of his political agenda would be built: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”
Trump’s concerns about the border were reasonable, but his proposal was patently absurd. If former Trump employee Sam Nunberg’s recollections are correct, the wall was dreamed up by the campaign as a “a mnemonic device of sorts, a way to make sure their candidate … would remember to talk about getting tough on immigration.” Building a 2,000-mile concrete wall along the varied terrain of our southern border was impractical enough. The notion that Trump could additionally strong-arm the Mexican government into paying for it was downright impossible.
But the slogan generated enough buzz for Trump to beat out one of the most talented primary fields in modern American politics and then Hillary Clinton. His mantra didn’t have to make sense; it just had to condense righteous indignation into a three-word proposal that enthused his base and owned the libs.
The Left’s most Trumpy superstar has now given Democrats their own version of “Mexico-Is-Going-To-Pay-For-It,” and it’s called the “Green New Deal.” Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has managed to induce at least 70 Democratic lawmakers, including presidential hopefuls Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to endorse this impossible proposal to make the nation carbon-neutral in a decade, without even knowing what shape it will take.
At best, the “Green New Deal” is a campaign slogan. At worst, it’s a Trojan horse of socialist fantasies that will seek to nationalize one-fifth of our economy. Along with the equally impossible “Medicare for All,” it comes with a federal jobs guarantee and a ban on any cap-and-trade regime to rationalize carbon reductions (“corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits”) plus vague promises to “promote justice and equity.”
The mere fact that the “Green New Deal” doesn’t exist as an actual, coherent piece of legislation hasn’t stopped it from becoming the greatest thing on the Left since sliced-bread lines in the old Soviet Union.
Illegal immigration and climate change are both real and pressing issues that concern average Americans. We don’t want our sea levels rising and acidifying, just as we don’t want unfettered flows of illegal immigrants crossing our sovereign borders. But just as “And-Mexico-Is-Going-To-Pay-For-It” became more of a symbol of defiance than an actual possible campaign promise, the “Green New Deal” has Democrats marching in lockstep to prove they’re woke without providing any scientifically or economically viable solutions.
After being elected, President Trump wisely began to listen to experts from the Department of Homeland Security. As a consequence, he scaled back his initial and impractical demands to a few hundred miles of smart fencing and more boots on the ground where needed. It’s less a policy concession than a policy improvement, despite the refusal of Democrats to admit otherwise.
It’s fully possible that as the still nonexistent details of the “Green New Deal” unfold, Democratic voters will insist on moderating the concept. But as it stands, the left-wing hype over the “Green New Deal” sounds an awful lot like chants from red-capped “MAGA” crowds in 2015.
