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LifeZette editor-in-chief Laura Ingraham referred to reports of GOP leaders “sitting behind closed doors” and laughing at the prospect of building the wall, to which McDaniel warned those lawmakers are “going to lose the trust of our base.”

I doubt that this quite catches the tone of those closed-door discussions. Trump's rants about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it were great theater for the primaries. But Trump was talking through his hat, and everyone knew it. Several of the other candidates, most notably Ted Cruz, were trying to talk seriously about immigration and what could be done to reestablish effective border control, but that all got drowned out by Trump's demagoguery. Now Trump is discovering that it's going to be harder than he thought.

I imagine a lot of the Republican lawmakers are in "we told you so" mode right now. The question is how big a stick of dynamite they want to use to blow themselves up trying to redeem a promise that (1) they didn't make themselves and (2) Trump should not have made in the first place.

The Cruz stump speech was very good on this sort of thing. He was very careful to distinguish between what he could do as president by executive order, what could be done by regulation (which takes some time), and what would require an Act of Congress (and, in all likelihood, 60 votes in the Senate). But the voters in their wisdom were not interested in someone who had actually thought his way through the problem. They preferred someone who promised instant gratification via means that, in truth, he had no way of implementing.

So here we are. Virtually all Republicans on the Hill support regaining control of the border. Most of them support some form of a "wall," though not necessarily a continuous 2,500 physical barrier. The question is, how many of them are willing to go through another government shutdown over the issue? Probably not enough.

I should have said, how many of the Republicans on the Hill are willing to go through another government shutdown to try to redeem Trump's over-promising?

A great deal can be done to restore border control by executive action. I gather that Trump has made a good start there. I imagine there are many regulations that need to be changed. That may happen in time; Trump needs to get his administration staffed first. The sanctuary cities issue just became much harder that anyone in TrumpWorld ever imagined. And anything requiring legislation is going to be much harder.

Over-promising is a dangerous game. Trump won the nomination by promising unrealistically quick and easy solutions. The danger right now is that Trump supporters will react to every disappointment not with sober reassessment and doubling down on the hard work that has to be done, but by blaming the people who knew what they were talking about in the first place.

The question is how big a stick of dynamite they want to use to blow themselves up trying to redeem a promise that (1) they didn't make themselves and (2) Trump should not have made in the first place.

You seem to be an advocate for the status quo, in regards to this issue.

Most people in this country are sick to death of the status quo, in relation to immigration (and just about every other issue you can name). It's WHY we elected Trump in the first place.

His promises on the campaign trail merely reflected where most people want this country to go. Trump was simply smart enough, and observant enough to get it. He shaped his campaign around the needs and desires of tens of millions of us who've been screaming to the rafters for decades.

He most definitely SHOULD have promised a wall, and the dunderhead Republicans in Congress had better come to grips with the fact that this is the PEOPLE'S agenda - not theirs. We intend to see this country put to rights, and we will oust every one of them to get the job done, if that's what it takes!