Just in case anyone was still doubting that the Republican Congress would be jumping to please President-elect Trump, several members of the House of Representatives are now working on ways to quickly build his promised Mexican border wall. And you can bet this is going to happen for one simple reason: For Trump and the Republicans, it's the political gift that keeps on giving. And it doesn't even matter who pays for it.
Something too many people have forgotten about the border wall is that the American people actually want it. They've wanted it for years. They've wanted it at least since President Bill Clinton started to promise to improve border security with new barriers back in 1995.
With that support in mind, the fact that there's been so much partisan opposition to and "expert" derision of Trump's "build the wall" plan just goes to show how skewed and corrupt politics and political punditry has become in America.
Some of that punditry includes relying on obviously faulty polling. During the summer, several pundits trotted out a Pew Research poll showing that a majority of Americans opposed Trump's plan to build a wall along the entire border with Mexico.
There was just one problem: Trump has never proposed such a wall along the entire 2,000 mile border and the Pew poll question asked the question using that word, "entire." Much more honest polling showed the truth: For example, one YouGov poll asked whether respondents supported some kind of new wall or fence of any size. And in that poll, 64 percent favored building a wall or a fence between the U.S. and Mexico. That included 87 percent of Republicans, and what's more, even Democrats supported it by a narrow 44-43 percent margin.
For House and Senate Republicans already looking to those 2018 midterm elections, you better believe they're hearing those polls loud and clear.
We're still going to hear a lot about that skewed Pew poll and perhaps a few other surveys that say the wall idea is unpopular. But don't be fooled, especially since the most important poll of all, the 2016 election results, gave Trump a 30-20 state victory including the two states with the longest borders with Mexico.