Soldiers, poor kids and their own voters count less than political power.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

What would you shut down the government over?

Senator Schumer and his fellow Democrats decided to shut down the government over illegal aliens. They put illegal aliens ahead of paychecks for our soldiers.

“Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can’t let that happen!” President Trump tweeted.

“We’re not going to reopen negotiations on illegal immigration until they reopen the government and give you, our soldiers and your families, the benefits and wages you’ve earned,” Vice President Mike Pence told soldiers on the way to Kuwait.

The men and women of the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado will spend six months in the Middle East. They go off knowing that the Democrats in their country’s government value their service and their sacrifices less than they do those of an illegal alien who crossed the border a few years ago and whose only contribution to this country is being a certain Democrat vote in a swing state in elections to come.

Last month, lefties across the country cheered as Jimmy Kimmel, a left-wing talk show host whose acting skills previously hadn’t stretched much beyond voicing Spanky on Garfield, jammed his best crying onions in his eyes and wept over the fate of the Children’s Health insurance Program.

Now suddenly CHIP doesn’t matter anymore. Republicans offered CHIP funding, but the Dems held out for illegal alien amnesty. Poor kids might not grow up voting for the Dems. But the illegal aliens will. And Kimmel, who had only pretended to care about CHIP, insisted that DACA illegal aliens come first.

Immigration advocates were lecturing us about the poem written on a bronze plaque in the Statue of Liberty. The Schumer Shutdown also shut down the Statue of Liberty. Now no one can read that poem.

“Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight,” Schumer wailed when President Trump signed an executive action to keep New Yorkers safe from the Islamic terrorists who, like illegal aliens and many criminals, are a core Democrat constituency. Stunts like that helped earn Chuck Schumer the nickname, “Cryin’ Chuck”. But then Schumer went and shut down Lady Liberty.

Senator Schumer cared as much about the Statue of Liberty as Jimmy Kimmel cared about CHIP. The great weepers of the left only cry only for the absolute and unlimited power to destroy America.

Their tears are as fake as their news.

The left has shown that it will sacrifice anything and everything for political power. If cutting apart the Statue of Liberty for scrap would get the Dems 1,000,000 illegal alien votes, Chuck would show up in New York Harbor with a hacksaw before dawn.

And there wouldn’t be a tear in his eye.

Why do illegal aliens come first for Schumer and Kimmel? Why do they come ahead of soldiers and poor kids? Because it’s all about rigging future elections by using illegal aliens to change state demographics.

The Schumer Shutdown is the big Dem bet on a future national majority manufactured through open borders. The Dems are even willing to throw away the midterm elections to get DACA set. They’re gambling that even if the voters turn on them over putting illegal aliens ahead of soldiers and poor kids, it’s worth taking the risk now if they can get an illegal alien amnesty that ends the two-party system.

The Schumer Shutdown trades the benefits of inner city constituents for the illegal alien votes that the Dems hope to gain once amnesty and everything that comes with it kick in. The Democrats are showing African-American voters that they’re worth less to them than future illegal alien voters.

They’re sending the same message to the legal Latino immigrants who vote for them.

The Dems aren’t satisfied with the voters they have. They want the voters that they’re not allowed to have by law. And they’re holding the country hostage until the White House and the Senate majority elected by the voters agree to break the law and destroy the country.

Democrats don’t care about illegal aliens out of the goodness of their crooked hearts. If the average illegal alien crossing the border were Republican, the wall would be up yesterday. And it would be topped with heavy artillery and surrounded by a moat filled with piranhas and crocodiles. Drones would fire Hellfire missiles at anyone even looking at it the wrong way because he might be a Republican.

That’s the shameful, disgusting truth.

Is there anything that the Democrats care more about than exploiting illegal aliens for political power?

Forget our men and women in uniform. The Dems spent the last eight years in the White House trying to take away their hot meals and their health care. The only thing they gutted more than the military was NASA because both represent the national greatness of this country that they hate with all their hearts.

But, name a Dem spending priority, and you’ll see how much the hypocrites really care about it.

Education, civil rights, health care, research grants and national parks are all undermined by the Schumer Shutdown. Every one of these has been used as a Dem talking point to slam Republicans in the past weeks and months. But when push came to shove, the Democrats put illegal aliens ahead of education for poor kids, campus civil rights investigations, health care for poor kids and national parks.

That’s not because they love illegal aliens. It’s because they love power.

Illegal aliens have more concentrated political power per ounce than any of these programs. And when it comes to sniffing out power, lefties have the instincts of bloodhounds. They’re masters at picking which program gets them the most political power and putting it ahead of everything else.

That’s what they’re doing with DACA.

What the Schumer Shutdown shows is that there is not a single thing that the Democrats will put ahead of power. Not the things that we care about. Not the things that Americans care about. Not even the things that they claim to care about. As 1984 warns us, the purpose of power is power.

The Dems broke the law to get DACA. They’re breaking the law by trying to keep it. And now they shut down the government to get to full amnesty. That is what political power means to them.

Most Americans, even in a rigged CNN poll, want the Democrats to keep the government running. They don’t want to see a government shutdown for illegal aliens. That’s even true among the minorities and young people who usually vote Dem. The only people who think otherwise are the Dems.

Dems are the only group where a majority prioritizes illegal aliens over the United States government.

But if they’re willing to sacrifice everything American for illegal aliens, what’s American about them? What’s American about a political movement that wants power so badly that it’s willing to break the law, hurt the military and even their own voters, and destroy their own country to get it?

That’s the Schumer Shutdown.

The Dems frequently bring up the Republican shutdown of the government. But when Republicans shut down the government, it was to restore health insurance to millions of Americans who had lost it because of ObamaCare. When the Democrats shut down the government, they took the health insurance of poor children hostage so they could use illegal aliens to win future elections.

Republicans put Americans first. Democrats put Americans last.