The script was a familiar one. Some controversy causes a continuing resolution spending bill not to pass because of a Senate filibuster. The Republicans are blamed for shutting down the government because they didn’t get their way. Eventually, Senate Republicans are forced to cave and vote to reopen the government without having whatever their concerns were addressed.

The GOP takes a public relations hit. The democrats must have thought that the sequence of events, last seen in 2013 when the government shut down over Sen.Ted Cruz’s demand that Obamacare be defunded, would end in their favor.

However, the latest government shut down crisis over DACA and illegal immigration did not end the way the Democrats wanted.

The Democrats stepped in it

The problem, from the point of view of the Democrats, started to become apparent when the Republicans became united on message. The Democrats have shut down the government, therefore refusing to pay, among other people, soldiers fighting in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, in exchange for giving out favors for illegal aliens. It did not help that someone found an old video of Sen Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declaring that shutting down the government over illegal aliens would be crazy. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s hysterical rant about not listening to a “draft dodger” about due consideration for servicemen and servicewomen also did not help.

The Democrats are in full retreat

The end was apparent when the Washington Post declared that the crisis was of the Democrats own making. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled a vote to invoke cloture and end the debate on passing a three week CR that would reopen the government, the Democrats wisely took that lifeline.

A debate and vote on dealing with the DACA illegals have been promised, but that was a given even before the shutdown crisis. In any case, Fox News’ Brit Hume put it best,

What happens now?

The DACA bill, which will provide some protection of illegal aliens who were brought across the border as children, therefore through no fault of their own, and have in many cases grown up as Americans, will now be debated and voted on.

The Republicans will demand full funding for the border wall and an end to chain migration and lottery migration as a price. Considering how burned the Democrats have been, it is unlikely they will try a shutdown again. The betting is that a DACA bill will pass with the border security and immigration reform measures that the Republicans and President Donald Trump are demanding. The bottom line is that the Democrats have caved and Trump and the GOP are entirely triumphant.