Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I see shutting down the government as violating a norm, and pretending that things continue normally when it's shut down as additional violation. So in that sense, saying that the speech should wait until the government is open seems restorative. Not sure that the shutdown will go another two weeks, so I would not be surprised if there's a deal before then and that even if Trump backs down, his getting to do the SOTU on the original date will be painted (by him) as Pelosi caving.
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Don't think I view Pelosi as the norm violator here. I'm just citing the fact that in this bizarre set of affairs, another norm (that the President give a SOTU before Congress) has been violated. Has that ever happened before?
I think Pelosi was smart to do what she did. I'd have done the same. You can't give a bully a pedestal to make a political speech to Congress lambasting half the room for refusing to get behind his request for $5bil for a wall that is never going to be built and even if it were going to be built would be largely futile.
The abnormality here isn't that the govt is shut down. That's happened quite a few times before. The abnormality is that the govt is shutdown over something that is a pure political stunt. At least in the past when it was shut down, there was a real dispute, an actual disagreement over something that was going to happen. The wall is complete fiction. From a construction standpoint it cannot be built. This dispute might as well be over whether Congress will allocate funds for Trump to build time machines.
