House Conservatives: Fund the Wall or We’ll Shut the Government Down

In interviews with the media and advertisements for their electoral campaigns, at least two Republicans in the House of Representatives have said that the time has come to make sure that President Donald Trump’s vision for a magnificent border wall comes to fruition. House Rep. Mark Meadows, the man in charge of the Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama have both said in the past week that they will go to any lengths necessary to make sure America gets the border protection it voted for last November.

In an interview with Breitbart News, Meadows said that his talks with President Trump have given him the impression that the White House will not sign off on any spending bill that does not include money for the wall.

“My conversations with the president have led me to believe that there is nothing less than a full and total commitment on his part to only sign into law a funding bill that actually allows for us to start construction of a border wall on our southern border,” Meadows said.

He went on to say that there was “nothing more critical that has to be funded than the border wall,” a sentiment many of Trump’s supporters would wholeheartedly agree with.

In a new ad for his Senate campaign, Brooks said that he would “fight every spending bill that doesn’t fund that wall.”

“And if I have to filibuster on the Senate floor,” he said, “I’ll even read the King James Bible until the wall is funded. We’re going to build that wall, or you’ll know the name of every Republican who surrenders to the Democrats to break my filibuster. I give you my word, and I don’t give my word lightly.”

Funding for the wall would almost certainly be enough to kick off any potential Democrat votes for the spending bill, meaning Republicans would be left with only two choices in September: Compromise or take the division all the way to a government shutdown. And there are at least a few Republicans who have very little appetite in such a shutdown, particularly if it comes about over a border wall they never really cared about in the first place.

But this will be a big test of how much of the Trump phenomenon has sunk in with the Republicans in Congress. Do they still have the fear of god in them? Do they still realize exactly what happened last year in the primaries? Or do they think Trump was just a one-off sensation and nothing to be worried about in the future? Do they really think that their voters did not speak LOUD and CLEAR about illegal immigration?

These questions will be answered in just a few months, and they may be answered again – resoundingly – when those Republicans who cave under pressure come up for re-election.