Biden's border bungle presents political opportunity for GOP

 Politico:

When Donald Trump took his final trip as president to the southwest border in January, the publicly stated purpose was to tout his record. Privately, however, his Republican allies had hatched a plan that they thought could get them back into the seats of power.

In Alamo, Texas, supporters lined the route of the motorcade. Trump used a Sharpie to autograph a newly constructed piece of the 452 miles of a 30-foot steel wall. He was joined by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as the head of the federal agency charged with border enforcement, Mark Morgan, and Tom Homan, a former Trump immigration official who had pushed for Republicans to speak more about the issue during the 2020 campaign.

Graham “thought this needed to be an area of contrast so that when the Senate elections happen in 2022 this could be a place where they could really have some contrast,” said a person familiar with the senator’s four-hour visit with Trump at the White House four days earlier. Graham’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The conversations around the trip were some of the earliest indications that Republicans anticipated the spike in migrants crossing the border — due to seasonal patterns and regional crises — and planned to use it as a political cudgel to try to retake Congress in the midterm elections. The topic turned out to be much more of a vulnerability for Biden than even they expected.

A record increase in the number of unaccompanied children coming to the border, the slow pace to process and house them, and the White House’s muddled message around it all is complicating Biden’s attempt to focus on fighting the coronavirus and reviving the economy. And while many of the political problems he is facing are of his own making, some of it was set in motion — through policy choices and political calculations — by his opponents before he even stepped foot in the Oval Office.

Now, after weeks of traveling to the border, writing letters, drafting memos and calling for investigations, Republicans are readying an even more aggressive plan to feature Biden’s policies in campaign ads and mailers in states across the country. GOP officials say the border — alongside the resistance to reopening schools during the pandemic — offer them the greatest political opportunities so far in Biden’s young presidency.

“It’s going to be a massive issue ... in the midterms,” said Republican strategist Jason Miller, an adviser to Trump. “Biden clearly made a number of deals with progressives in his party but progressives in his party don’t necessarily represent the swing voters and working class blue collar voters all around the country.”

In interviews with a dozen Democrats and Republicans — including GOP strategists, Biden advisers and immigration advocates who work with the White House — a picture emerges not just of a Republican Party eager to leverage a policy point that worked well for Trump in his first run for office, but of a Biden White House that was ill-prepared for them to do that. Several Democrats and immigration activists who support Biden said they have grown frustrated that the White House has failed to respond to the attacks more forcefully and fully embrace pro-immigration policies.
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The Democrats are trapped by their own policies.   They wanted people to come so they could use them to steal House seats by counting them in the census.  At the same time, they are trying to outlaw voter ID in the hopes that these people could illegally vote.  They cannot openly admit their scheme and they appear hopelessly inept at trying to control the flow of illegals.  Trying to change the semantics of the illegal immigration is more laughable than it is effective in dealing with the crisis they created and refuse to admit to.