Important headlines for July 3rd – ICE, ICE baby...
Bottom Line: These are stories you shouldn't miss and my takes on them...
The Problem With 'Abolish ICE' Bill Scher, RealClearPolitics
Excerpt: It doesn’t seem to matter that the “Abolish ICE” movement doesn’t have an actual proposal for what should replace ICE, or even if it should be replaced at all. Abolishing an agency doesn’t abolish immigration laws, and some Abolish ICE advocates dance around questions of if and how exactly those laws would be enforced.
The reality is “Abolish ICE” is not so much a policy proposal as a fresh cudgel to divide the Democratic Party between “Establishment” politicians and left-wing insurgents. Anyone with the temerity to take a breath and think through the practical consequences of such a slapdash idea gets tagged with a scarlet “E,” as was Crowley.
Hot Take: The advent of the "resist" movement on the left brought about similarities and comparisons with the Tea Party movement on the right. Both at their core were and are challenges to political establishment. With the Tea Party movement, many disenfranchised and under-represented conservatives banded together with many libertarian conservatives to create a powerful political movement that took out party leadership like Eric Cantor and John Boehner in Congress and led to record wins in midterm elections. While the most apparent wins occurred in the record setting 2010 midterm cycle for the Tea Party, it could be argued that Donald Trump's demolition of the Republican party establishment (after Romney still managed to win the party nomination in 2012) was the culmination of the movement. If you follow the similarities, there's a lot that's similar to what's happening on the left. The difference of course is what the political movement represents.
As a Socialist, Bernie Sanders made serious inroads to disrupting the Democrats establishment in 2016. This year we've already seen the left's equivalent of taking out Eric Cantor in a primary with Crowley going down – again to a Socialist. Is Pelosi next? But here's the thing – we're talking about a movement that's attempting to take down the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
This is an agency that's comprised of more than 20,000 people working within the confines of the Department of Homeland Security and is the 2nd most significant contributor to US national security. That leads to the next point about ICE. It's often confused with Border Patrol which it isn't. ICE operates in 46 countries outside of the US. To abolish ICE would also abolish the work and intelligence provided in those countries around the world.
It's at this point that it's worth noting that the only constitutionally mandated task of the federal government is to provide security for its citizens. Everything else is secondary. It's a pretty a tough sell to suggest that a politician could faithfully uphold the constitution and call for the end of the of ICE.