Here’s why the shutdown won’t end anytime soon – Washington Examiner

Shutdown writing is tedious because it tends to follow a pattern: Nothing has happened for weeks and nothing is likely to happen for the next couple weeks. Updates to follow.

The wall isn’t even really the point anymore, as if $5 billion could ever do more than pay for a few hundred steel slats along the southern border anyway. Aside from the overflowing toilets at national parks and the army of inconvenienced furloughed federal employees then, the only question that actually matters is who the public will hold responsible when the government reopens.

Of course, President Trump blames Democrats for the shutdown he at first took credit for. (“I would be proud to shut down the government.”) For the last three weeks though, he has been inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to make a deal.

[Read: Federal employees file for unemployment as government shutdown becomes longest in history]

This strategy isn’t working, and this shutdown won’t stop anytime soon. Recent polling shows why.

The Washington Post and ABC News found that 53 percent of respondents blamed Trump and Republicans in Congress for the shutdown, 29 percent blamed Democrats, and 13 percent blamed both sides.

After first glancing at these numbers, one would assume the White House would realize they were losing the messaging war. But a closer look shows why the shutdown will continue: Trump is getting good scores on this shutdown with Republicans.

Trump promised his base a wall, and the GOP is increasingly getting on board even when construction seems impossible. As the Washington Post reports, support for the wall jumped 16 percent in the last year from 71 to 87 percent.

And this is why the shutdown won’t end anytime soon. Trump continues to get what he wants, namely giving the impression to his supporters that he still fights. He does this by not doing anything. Until something changes drastically, nothing will change at all.