Whatever his impact may be on the country or the world, Donald Trump’s presidency imperils the future of his party, and there isn’t a serious-minded Republican in Washington who would tell you otherwise, privately.
In the short term, Trump’s determination to upend the health care market, his vague tax plan that’s already unpopular, an approval rating that can’t crack 40 percent, his exhausting and inexhaustible penchant for conflict — all of it threatens to make a massacre of the midterm elections, if you go by any historical marker.
In the longer term, it’s plausible to think that Trump’s public ambivalence toward white supremacists, along with his contempt for immigrants and internationalism, could end up rebranding Republicans, for generations, as the party of the past.
Trump doesn’t care what happens to Republicans after he’s gone. The party was always like an Uber to him — a way to get from point A to point B without having to find some other route or expend any cash.
Which leads to the question I hear all the time these days. Why aren’t more Republicans separating themselves from Trump? And why aren’t they doing more with the power they have to get in his way?
Sure, you have a senator like Bob Corker, a party pillar and notorious straight shooter, who publicly worried that an unrestrained Trump might bumble his way into World War III. That should have been sobering.
But barely a week later, here’s Mitch McConnell, the majority leader whom Trump has repeatedly demeaned, standing in the Rose Garden, smiling thinly and making hollow sounds about unity, allowing himself to be used for another weird Trump selfie.
It’s actually not hard to understand why McConnell and his fellow lawmakers don’t stand up and declare independence from this rancid mess of a presidency.
It’s just increasingly hard to justify.
I don’t read a ton of opinion pieces online, unless they happen to concern the Yankees, but there was one on CNN.com last weekend that caught my attention. It was written by Steve Israel, who until this year was a senior Democrat in Congress, serving Long Island.
Responding to Corker’s sudden eruption of candor, Israel explained that retiring politicians like Corker, who has announced this will be his last term in the Senate, have the luxury of dispensing with political calculation.
“Many of us who’ve left elective life feel a sense of liberation, as if our tongues are no longer strapped to the left or right side of our mouths,” Israel wrote, with admirable flair.
“It’s wonderful to speak your mind without worrying about the next campaign, or parsing every word knowing that some opponent could twist an errant phrase against you out of context.”
We get it. It isn’t news that politicians have to be, you know, political. Or at least politicians not named Trump.
And these days, as I’ve noted many times, the real fear for most elected officials in Washington isn’t that they may say something to offend persuadable voters, whose existence no one really believes in anymore, like Bigfoot or Bill O’Reilly.
No, the fear now, if you’re sitting on either end of the Capitol, is that some no-name activist will decide to primary you, because you’ve somehow run afoul of extremists with followings on Twitter and Facebook, and you’ll have to spend all your time and money holding onto a job that you might very well lose, since it takes only one fringe group or millionaire and a few thousand angry voters to tip the balance in your average congressional primary.
The fact that Israel is the one writing about this dilemma should tell you that this isn’t simply a Republican phenomenon. Yes, Republicans are more tightly wedged between conscience and job security right now, because the president is constantly putting both in jeopardy.
But Democrats, too, often find themselves pinned between reason and reflexive ideology, mouthing mantras of economic populism that aren’t all that different from what Trump believes, and that most of them know to be painfully simplistic. Serving in Congress now, on either side of the aisle, often means hearing from a tiny slice of loud activists first, and everyone else where you can fit them in.
Our primary system wasn’t designed for an age when social media could supplant institutional loyalties, and at the moment it’s skewing the entire political process. So Israel offers a pretty fair explanation for why his former colleagues remain so maddeningly reticent.
In the short term, Trump’s determination to upend the health care market, his vague tax plan that’s already unpopular, an approval rating that can’t crack 40 percent, his exhausting and inexhaustible penchant for conflict — all of it threatens to make a massacre of the midterm elections, if you go by any historical marker.
In the longer term, it’s plausible to think that Trump’s public ambivalence toward white supremacists, along with his contempt for immigrants and internationalism, could end up rebranding Republicans, for generations, as the party of the past.Trump doesn’t care what happens to Republicans after he’s gone. The party was always like an Uber to him — a way to get from point A to point B without having to find some other route or expend any cash.
Which leads to the question I hear all the time these days. Why aren’t more Republicans separating themselves from Trump? And why aren’t they doing more with the power they have to get in his way?
Sure, you have a senator like Bob Corker, a party pillar and notorious straight shooter, who publicly worried that an unrestrained Trump might bumble his way into World War III. That should have been sobering.
But barely a week later, here’s Mitch McConnell, the majority leader whom Trump has repeatedly demeaned, standing in the Rose Garden, smiling thinly and making hollow sounds about unity, allowing himself to be used for another weird Trump selfie.
It’s actually not hard to understand why McConnell and his fellow lawmakers don’t stand up and declare independence from this rancid mess of a presidency.
It’s just increasingly hard to justify.
I don’t read a ton of opinion pieces online, unless they happen to concern the Yankees, but there was one on CNN.com last weekend that caught my attention. It was written by Steve Israel, who until this year was a senior Democrat in Congress, serving Long Island.
Responding to Corker’s sudden eruption of candor, Israel explained that retiring politicians like Corker, who has announced this will be his last term in the Senate, have the luxury of dispensing with political calculation.
“Many of us who’ve left elective life feel a sense of liberation, as if our tongues are no longer strapped to the left or right side of our mouths,” Israel wrote, with admirable flair.
“It’s wonderful to speak your mind without worrying about the next campaign, or parsing every word knowing that some opponent could twist an errant phrase against you out of context.”
We get it. It isn’t news that politicians have to be, you know, political. Or at least politicians not named Trump.
And these days, as I’ve noted many times, the real fear for most elected officials in Washington isn’t that they may say something to offend persuadable voters, whose existence no one really believes in anymore, like Bigfoot or Bill O’Reilly.
No, the fear now, if you’re sitting on either end of the Capitol, is that some no-name activist will decide to primary you, because you’ve somehow run afoul of extremists with followings on Twitter and Facebook, and you’ll have to spend all your time and money holding onto a job that you might very well lose, since it takes only one fringe group or millionaire and a few thousand angry voters to tip the balance in your average congressional primary.
The fact that Israel is the one writing about this dilemma should tell you that this isn’t simply a Republican phenomenon. Yes, Republicans are more tightly wedged between conscience and job security right now, because the president is constantly putting both in jeopardy.
But Democrats, too, often find themselves pinned between reason and reflexive ideology, mouthing mantras of economic populism that aren’t all that different from what Trump believes, and that most of them know to be painfully simplistic. Serving in Congress now, on either side of the aisle, often means hearing from a tiny slice of loud activists first, and everyone else where you can fit them in.
Our primary system wasn’t designed for an age when social media could supplant institutional loyalties, and at the moment it’s skewing the entire political process. So Israel offers a pretty fair explanation for why his former colleagues remain so maddeningly reticent.
by Matt Bai, Yahoo News | Read more:
Image: Bill Clark/Getty
