It’s not working any more, this scam Republicans have been running for 45 years, although Trump and many others are trying their best to revive it.

Their strategy has always been simple: break things here in America, create chaos and a mess, hurt working class people while making billionaires richer, and then campaign on fixing what they screwed up.

Two years ago, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers stood in a grocery store for an advertisement blaming Joe Biden for the price of eggs (without mentioning the bird flu that was jacking prices). This week he’s back in nearly the same folksy jacket telling voters that it’s time for Trump to end his illegal war against Iran so gas prices can come down.

Rogers new ad leaves out, of course, the fact that he’d cheered for the war on the day it began in February, claiming Iran was an imminent threat to the United States (it wasn’t and isn’t), and hit multiple rightwing podcasts and media opportunities to demand Americans unite behind Trump in prosecuting the war.

He’s not alone. Just last week, Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson voted to keep the war going — after voting six times previously to support Trump and his war — but a few days ago cut a desperate ad calling for a swift end to the fighting.

Iowa Republicans Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, both in tight House races, suddenly discovered the War Powers Act and joined Democrats to limit the president they’d been backing. Down in Florida, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar released an ad warning that Miller’s brutal masked goons have gone too far and that Hispanic voters now feel betrayed.

Americans have noticed who lit these particular fires. A New York Times/Siena poll this month found 50 percent of registered voters trust Democrats over Republicans to handle foreign wars, and GOP whackadoodle Nancy Mace, on her way out of Congress, told reporters she’s expecting a “bloodbath” at the polls this November.

Trump himself, asked on Meet the Press how a seven-month war squares with two campaigns with hundreds of promises of no new wars, answered that he “didn’t promise anything” and stormed out of the interview like a petulant 10-year-old.

This is just the latest in a 45-year-long Republican scam where they break something in America, blame it on the Democrats, and then run for election on a promise to fix what they broke.

Probably their most successful of these scams since the Clinton years has been to invite non-citizens from south of the border to come into the US whenever a Democrat is in the White House, falsely claiming that the Democrat had “opened the border.” This lie, of course, encourages desperate people to head north and that gives the GOP and their media operations the photo-op they need.

Just google “open border” and “congressman,” “congresswoman,” or “senator” and you’ll get a list of Republican politicians too long to print. These are the quotes that coyotes — human smugglers — print out and distribute to desperate people in Central and South America as advertisements to get people to trade their lives’ savings for transportation to the Rio Grande.

Not one single Democratic president ever “opened” the border or declared it open. It’s a complete lie, top to bottom, that Republicans and billionaire-owned media repeat obsessively.

Obama, in fact, deported more people than Trump did in his first term. But Republicans still use that lie to roll out the red carpet to wannabe immigrants.

At the top of that list of Republicans lying about Democrats “opening the border,” of course, you’ll find the most contemptible Republican demagogues cranking this stuff out during the last two years of Biden’s presidency so they could use the immigrant issue to get Trump back into the White House in 2024. Here’s a tiny sample from the months leading up to recent elections:

— Ted Cruz wants everybody south of our border to know that the “Biden Open Border Policy [is] A Very Craven Political Decision”;— Rick Scott wants everybody to know that “Americans Don’t Want [Biden’s] Open Borders”;— Marco Rubio says there’s “Nothing Compassionate About Biden’s Open Border Policies”;— Rand Paul is so extreme he tells us Senator Rubio “is the one for an open border”;— Josh Hawley says “Biden’s Open Border Policy Has Created a Moral Crisis”;— Tom Cotton “Insists the Border is Wide Open”;— Ron Johnson wants the world to know that “Our National Security is at Risk Because Democrats have Turned Border Security into a Partisan Issue”;— Marjorie Taylor Greene “BLASTS Open Border Hypocrites”;— Mo Brooks opposes “Socialist Democrats’ Open Border Policies for Helping Kill Americans”;— Lauren Boebert says the “Root Cause” of the open border crisis “is in the White House”;— Matt Gaetz “revealed a complex and deceitful agenda by Joe Biden’s Democrat administration to evade our Southern Border law enforcement”;— Gym Jordan says “Biden’s Deliberate Support of Illegal Immigration Could Lead to Impeachment”;— Kevin McCarthy says the Biden Administration has “Utterly Failed” to secure the “open border”;— Elise Stefanik proclaims “Biden’s Open Border Policies have been a Complete Disaster.”— Tom Cole’s website features “Biden’s Open Border America”; — Bob Goode brags about introducing legislation named the “Close Biden’s Open Border Act”;— John Rose “Calls Out Biden’s Open Border Policies”;— Paul Gosar claims Biden is “Destroying America with His Open Border Policies”;— Roger Williams complains about the “Democrats’ Open Border Problem”;— Tom Cole wants the world to know that Biden’s “open border policies have given the green light to migrants and bad actors from around the world…”;— Gus Bilirakis “Denounces Dangerous Open Border Policies on the House Floor”;

The list goes on and on, every single one from a Republican.

And these messages have spread all across Central and South America, just as Republicans hoped they would, driven by human smugglers following the profit motive.

All based on an intentional Republican campaign lie that has worked well for them since they first used it on Clinton in the 1990s.

And here we go again, although this time Marjorie Taylor Greene called bullshit on her former colleagues.

Last Thursday, around 400 Hondurans — families with kids among them — crossed a bridge from Guatemala into Chiapas, Mexico on foot. Rightwing influencers, knowing the drill, immediately began to promote this new coming “invasion.” PJ Media ran the story under a headline that literally tied the caravan to a coming Democratic Congress.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was having none of it, though, writing on social media:

“We have not seen a caravan headed to the US southern border in several years, why now? Oh, yeah, there is an election coming and the GOP needs to scare you into voting because nothing else is working.”

Yep, it’s an old scam but an effective one. Essentially, what Republicans have been doing — since Reagan first told us government was our problem and he’d take care of ruining it for us — is to smash out our windows and then offer to sell us........

© Common Dreams