Here are a couple of thoughts I had watching President Trump's State of the Union speech Tuesday night:
President Trump announced his plan to give the Dreamers, immigrants that were brought to this country illegally as children, as well as other illegal immigrants amnesty and a path to citizenship - not just legal residency status but a path to full citizenship - in exchange for the border wall, an end to chain migration, and an end to the visa lottery system. I suspect that millions of Hispanics consider this an offer they'd be foolish to refuse, but it maneuvers the Democrats into a very awkward position vis a vis a significant segment of their base.
The Democrats' predicament is this: If they support his DACA proposal to give 1.8 million Dreamers and other illegal aliens a path to citizenship Mr. Trump will almost certainly get the credit for it, and many grateful Hispanics may see him as their political "savior", rewarding him with their allegiance in future elections.
If, though, the Democrats oppose the president on DACA, and their obstruction causes these immigrants to lose their temporary legal status, Hispanics will see the Democrats as having stood in the schoolhouse door, so to speak, preventing those Dreamers from eventually becoming citizens. This could potentially result in the alienation of a sizable fraction of Hispanic voters who had heretofore been a reliably loyal Democratic voting bloc.
The Democrats thus seem to find themselves politically between a rock and a hard place. They often accuse President Trump of being an idiot, but he has certainly outfoxed them on this one. It's no wonder they looked so grumpy during the SOTU.
On another issue, the president has also received sharp criticism for his scolding of certain FBI officials who have allegedly abused their power in an attempt to promote a personal political agenda, i.e. securing the election of Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump should be ashamed, the critics say, for demeaning a great and venerable institution like the FBI.
That this chastisement is coming from liberal progressives who, going back as far as the Bureau's surveillance of Martin Luther King in the 1960s, have scarcely ever had anything kind to say about the FBI, is at the very least peculiar. Suddenly now they're very concerned that the Bureau's reputation is being sullied?
The argument that the FBI should be beyond criticism and that taking it to task will only cause the public to lose confidence in it, is just silly. Consider an analogy: The Catholic church is comprised of many good and virtuous priests who do much good work among the poor and disadvantaged around the world.
Does this fact exempt the church from criticism when some priests abuse their station by abusing young boys and other prelates cover up for them? Should we refrain from insisting that the church purge itself of the miscreants just because it's a great and venerable institution in the world and that to expose clerical abuses will only precipitate a loss of confidence in it?
Of course not. Neither should we exempt the FBI from criticism if it's merited, and besides, the left, whose solicitousness of the FBI's reputation is very touching, will be eager to excoriate it as soon as it suits their political purposes to do so.