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Editor's Note: Dan Restrepo is a lawyer, Democratic strategist and political collaborator of CNN. He was presidential advisor and director for the Western Hemisphere of the National Security Council during the presidency of Barack Obama.
(CNN Spanish) - Finally someone put the country above the game.
This week, faced with an unpredictable leader who insists on trying to eliminate (albeit briefly) institutional counterweights, almost two dozen conservative politicians decided to contradict that leader. And they did it despite the threats and the updating of those threats of negative political consequences issued by that supposed political leader.
Unfortunately for those of us who live in the US, it did not happen here but in the United Kingdom.
- READ: Boris Johnson suffers a key defeat in his plan on brexit
The newly possessed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, champion of one of the biggest democratic mistakes in the history of democracies - Brexit - presented on August 28 a plan to suspend Parliament and thus deny them the opportunity to curb their insistence that the United Kingdom leaves the European Union yes or yes on October 31.
That desire to avoid any brake on the part of Parliament - a common feeling among neopopulists of all brands - resulted in something that has been absent from these modern populists in recent years: the exercise of principles and political courage.
Johnson, unexpectedly, found himself faced with an uprising within his own party that historically voted to take control of the prime minister's parliamentary agenda. And then even more members of the conservative party voted, despite the fact that the original rebels were expelled from the party in return by Johnson, to ban a departure from the European Union on October 31 without an agreement on the future of the relationship between Europe and the United Kingdom.
The rebels defended the principles and institutions, something fundamental for a democracy to function properly.
- READ: It's time to do things right in immigration in the Americas
On the other side of the Atlantic, that courage remains absent with negative consequences not only for American democracy but also with implications for our neighbors and the world.
Those consequences are seen, for example, in recent events in the Trump Wall Odyssey, electoral motto that became a confrontation between institutional powers in the US.
This week, the Trump administration announced that it will take about $ 3.6 billion from the budget of the Armed Forces to build the wall. A robbery enhanced by the lack of principles and courage of Republicans in Congress.
Trump had to take money from other military projects and programs because Congress, exercising its constitutional authority to control budgets, denied him funds for the construction of an absurd wall that will contribute nothing to US national interests.
- READ: Principles above political calculations
But Trump had the opportunity to do what he did this week, after all, because his party members continue to choose the party over the country.
In February, Trump declared a national emergency with respect to the border to expand his powers under an emergency law of the last century. That law gives Congress the opportunity to cancel any emergency declaration with a majority vote in both legislative rooms. Both rooms of the Congress acted and managed to pass a resolution denying the emergency.
Faced with a veto by President Trump, the Republicans in the House of Representatives decided not to put a country above the party and 181 of the 195 Republicans in the House supported the president's declaration of emergency by giving up control of funds, a fundamental power of Congress in our system.
Now the main symbol of white trump nationalism will advance: a wall that, of course, Trump promised again and again that Mexico would pay. If Trump manages to take land away from US citizens to build it, the wall will add to the recent abuse of tariffs as a tool for extortion on the issue of migration, as a medium and long-term poison for the most important relationship that the US has. in the world: the relationship with Mexico.
Conservative politicians of principle have defended the interests of the United Kingdom trying to save the future of their relationship with their neighbors despite an insistent leader who intends to undermine those interests.
Hopefully soon their counterparts in the old colonies will follow suit.
Brexit
