It's been said that we have two major governing parties in this country: the Democrats and the Republicans.  Each party has a different, broad-based approach to managing the country: the Democrats believe that government-created, taxpayer-funded programs – implemented from D.C. – are the best way to guide the country's fortunes, while Republicans feel that market-based, individually oriented solutions work to the best advantage of the nation.

That's a 30,000-ft generalized look at things, but it is widely accepted as true.

But it's not true.  Just the opposite: It's fundamentally false.  The Democrats are concerned primarily with winning political battles first and governing the country to the population's benefit second.  A look at some of today's higher-profile issues illustrates this quite clearly.  And this is not a peculiarity limited only to present-day circumstances.  The Democrats' approach to both yesterday's and tomorrow's major issues are equally persuasive as to their "governing" priorities.

Today's issues:

DACA and DREAMers – The Democrats pose as if this is the big humanitarian issue of our time.  "Through no fault of their own," some 800,000 children were dragged across our border when their parents illegally immigrated to this country.  The DREAMers, as they're so amusingly called, should not only be afforded amnesty and forgiveness according to the Democrats and allowed to stay in this country, but they should also be allowed to bring in their relatives as well (so-called chain migration).  But President Trump wants funding for his border wall, a central tenet of his campaign, as a condition to any compromise regarding the DREAMers.

The Democrats don't really have humanitarian concerns, and thus they have no incentive or inclination to compromise.  Their primary motivations are growing their voting base with low-income government-dependent immigrants whose offspring will become automatic Democratic voters a few years from now and the desire to simply make President Trump look bad, as a typical "heartless, cold" Republican.  Anything that reduces illegal immigration (the wall) or lessens the future pool of Democratic voters (deporting the DREAMers or ending chain migration) will be opposed by the Democrats with a vengeance.  The "public good" has nothing to do with anything.  A political win for the Democrats is all that matters.

Tax Reform – The Democrats don't care about the actual financial benefits that lower corporate taxes will deliver to the economy (such as greater investment by companies in plants and equipment, leading directly to increased employment), nor do they care about how much the average middle-class family will benefit from the extra hundreds of dollars of disposable income per month.  Democrats just want to further the cliché of rich Republicans getting huge undeserved tax breaks, while the average person suffers as a result.  Democrats simply want to sully the Republicans' image in the eyes of the casually attentive voter.

Mueller and Collusion – The Democrats' only goal here is to make Trump look bad, undermine his legitimacy as president, and keep his approval numbers low in advance of future elections.  The Democrats have no actual interest in the impact or influence foreign entities may have had on our voting process or on our electoral system.  If they did, they would be just as interested in the fact that Hillary Clinton maintained an illicit email server that contained unauthorized classified information and was hacked by Russians.  That is the very definition of reckless, illegal behavior by a candidate undermining the integrity of our election process.

But the Democrats aren't interested in the "integrity of our election process."  They're interested in a political win, not in serving the public good.

Government Shutdown – This is merely an opportunity for Democrats to make Republicans look bad, knowing that the liberal media will always cast any 'shutdown' as being completely the fault of Republicans, regardless of the actual circumstances.  Although both sides are well aware that essential funding continues even during a so-called "shutdown," Democrats will be quick to exploit an ignorant public with heart-wrenching advertisements of 90-year-old veterans on their once-in-a-lifetime trip to D.C. being turned away from the WWII Memorial or a small-town Boy Scout troop being unable to enter a national park.  All of this is intentionally orchestrated by Democrats, all to make Republicans look bad.  The "win" is all-important, after all, not the facts.

Those are just today's high-profile topics.  One of yesterday's was Hurricane Katrina.  The Democrats and the liberal media pounded President Bush incessantly for being insensitive to the plight of minorities for his supposed slow response to the crisis.  The Democrats' primary concern was winning the battle of public perception by making a Republican look bad.  They were successful.  They "won."  President Bush's presidency took a hit from which it never recovered, becoming yet another reason why a Republican presidential win in 2008 was so unlikely, regardless of who the Democratic candidate was.

Tomorrow's big issues may concern, for example, North Korea or Iran.  Democrats will undoubtedly use those circumstances to pile on with very public criticism of President Trump's handling of the situation.  Far from the old dictum of "politics stops at the water's edge," the Democrats will be more concerned with twisting a confrontation with North Korea or Iran into political advantage for themselves than they will be in helping forge a favorable bipartisan outcome for the good of our country.

To be perfectly honest, the Republicans are far from lily-white (am I allowed to use that term anymore?) when it comes to maneuvering the political chess pieces to their advantage.

The Democrats are first and foremost about winning.  For them, governing comes in second – and too often, it's a distant second.