How Donald Trump can win his first shutdown showdown

It’s President Donald Trump’s inaugural government shutdown battle. He needs a win after the Obamacare repeal meltdown. The win that Trump wants—funding for his campaign promises including a border wall — looks improbable. With only a few days left, facing well-entrenched Democrats, and lack of budget consensus among Republicans, here are three scenarios to look for. Two are losers for Trump. And one is a long shot for a win that, surprisingly, involves a shutdown.

Scenario 1: The Republican governing majority fails to produce a budget that can pass the House and Senate and also get Trump’s signature. There are real differences within Republican ranks on the budget, especially between deficit hawks and the Trump administration’s big (expensive) priorities. This scenario would be incredibly damaging to the White House and congressional Republicans. They’ll avoid it all costs. Which brings us to…

Scenario 2: A compromise budget gets passed and signed. Nobody is happy with it. Few, if any, Trump priorities get paid for; Democrats win on Planned Parenthood funding; the deficit continues to grow (at its kick-the-can-down-the-road pace); and the government stays open. It’s not really a loss. But in Trump’s world, where goals are larger than life and expectations are high, this scenario doesn’t really look like a win, either.

Scenario 3: Trump sticks to his guns. He ran on promises for which he now expects budget backing. He would need to rally the support of (and concede a few points to) Republicans in Congress. If, together, they craft a budget bill that ends with a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, the government will shut down. Oddly enough, this might be the only scenario in which Trump can produce a political win.

{mosads}The shutdown would be only the beginning. It would take a comprehensive communications push unlike any we’ve seen from Team Trump, even during the campaign.

In 2013, the Obama administration made a savvy shutdown play: They took the pain to the American people, leveraging their advantage in the media. From national park closures to barricades in front of open-air monuments in Washington, D.C., it was pure theater. And it worked — generating weeks of bad press and outrage directed at Republicans.

To win, Trump would need to flip the Obama playbook.

He would need to orchestrate a shutdown of non-essential government functions while minimizing the impact on citizens. Where the Obama playbook highlighted government functions as they paused, the Trump strategy would deliver a different message: “Don’t worry! We’re going to make everything run as smoothly as possible for Americans despite the Democrats’ obstructionism.”

Within the non-essential functions of government are many things beloved of Democrats. Think of programs for the arts and the environment. While many conservatives feel comfortable with a partial government shutdown because it illuminates wasteful aspects of the federal bureaucracy by suspending them, Democrats would feel the shutdown more acutely. Presumably, they would feel more pressure to yield on policy points to get the programs and departments they love up and running again.

If Trump and congressional Republicans choose to make a stand on this, they’ll show that they’re willing to continue fighting for the policies on which they campaigned and won. It puts Trump back in campaign mode, where he is more comfortable.

This won’t be easy for Trump. Democrats are in a great position here. All they have to do is resist the governing majority, point the finger, and say, “They shut it down.” Republicans will have to unify in the House and Senate to make Democrats own the shutdown entirely. A rigorously disciplined communications strategy using every channel available could accomplish this. Talk radio, local district voices, and online channels where Trump has traditionally shown strength would be especially important to get around mainstream media gatekeepers.

Are Republicans of all types — from the establishment, to the Freedom Caucus, to Donald Trump—willing to take this fight to the streets? We’ll know in a couple of days.

David Payne is the president of CODAVATE Public Affairs and is a national expert on advocacy in the digital age. Payne is a veteran of state and national political campaigns and teaches on digital campaign topics at The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management where he is also a member of the organization’s Board of Advisors.

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