Having closely watched congressional developments over the last few weeks, I’ve concluded that one much-discussed Democratic tactic for dealing with Trump 2.0 is probably mistaken, as I explained at New York:
No one is going to rank Mike Johnson among the great arm-twisting Speakers of the House, like Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Sam Rayburn, or even Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he still resembles Winston Churchill’s description of Clement Atlee as “a modest man with much to be modest about.”
But nonetheless, in the space of two weeks, Johnson has managed to get two huge and highly controversial measures through the closely divided House: a budget resolution that sets the stage for enactment of Donald Trump’s entire legislative agenda in one bill, then an appropriations bill keeping the federal government operating until the end of September while preserving the highly contested power of Trump and his agents to cut and spend wherever they like.
Despite all the talk of divisions between the hard-core fiscal extremists of the House Freedom Caucus and swing-district “moderate” Republicans, Johnson lost just one member — the anti-spending fanatic and lone wolf Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from the ranks of House Republicans on both votes. As a result, he needed not even a whiff of compromise with House Democrats (only one of them, the very Trump-friendly Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one of the measures, the appropriations bill).
Now there are a host of factors that made this impressive achievement possible. The budget-resolution vote was, as Johnson kept pointing out to recalcitrant House Republicans, a blueprint for massive domestic-spending cuts, not the cuts themselves. Its language was general and vague enough to give Republicans plausible deniability. And even more deviously, the appropriations measure was made brief and unspecific in order to give Elon Musk and Russ Vought the maximum leeway to whack spending and personnel to levels far below what the bill provided (J.D. Vance told House Republicans right before the vote that the administration reserved the right to ignore the spending the bill mandated entirely, which pleased the government-hating HFC folk immensely). And most important, on both bills Johnson was able to rely on personal lobbying from key members of the administration, most notably the president himself, who had made it clear any congressional Republican who rebelled might soon be looking down the barrel of a Musk-financed MAGA primary opponent. Without question, much of the credit Johnson is due for pulling off these votes should go to his White House boss, whose wish is his command.
But the lesson Democrats should take from these events is that they cannot just lie in the weeds and expect the congressional GOP to self-destruct owing to its many divisions and rivalries. In a controversial New York Times op-ed last month, Democratic strategist James Carville argued Democrats should “play dead” in order to keep a spotlight on Republican responsibility for the chaos in Washington, D.C., which might soon extend to Congress:
“Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.”
Now to be clear, Congressional GOP dysfunction could yet break out; House and Senate Republicans have struggled constantly to stay on the same page on budget strategy, the depth of domestic-spending cuts, and the extent of tax cuts. But as the two big votes in the House show, their three superpowers are (1) Trump’s death grip on them all, (2) the willingness of Musk and Vought and Trump himself to take the heat for unpopular policies, and (3) a capacity for lying shamelessly about what they are doing and what it will cost. Yes, ultimately, congressional Republicans will face voters in November 2026. But any fear of these elections is mitigated by the realization that thanks to the landscape of midterm races, probably nothing they can do will save control of the House or forfeit control of the Senate. So Republicans have a lot of incentives to follow Trump in a high-speed smash-and-grab operation that devastates the public sector, awards their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and wherever possible salts the earth to make a revival of good government as difficult as possible. Democrats have few ways to stop this nihilistic locomotive. But they may be fooling themselves if they assume it’s going off the rails without their active involvement.
An astonished reaction from the Bush-Cheney team? Probably not. Unlike the Washington press corps, I credit these guys with having a brain in their head. No doubt they’re busy trying to estimate the magnitude of the spike to be generated by the Saddam Trial, and trying to figure out if they can time it to coincide with November. If not, an invasion of Syria might do the trick.
I’m wondering whether the CBS/NTY poll might be the start of the first anti-spike in the Bush presidency, brought on by angry conservatives protesting the immigration reform and trip to Mars. Time will tell.
What are we as Democrats doing to get this issue out into the debate?
Um . . . Teddie gave a nice speech the other day. You get a pat on the head, Ted!
But seriously, it sends me into the slough of despond to watch our media. I never used to be one of those conspiracy-theorist types, ranting about the “corporate media, bought and paid for,” but lately . . . you’ve just gotta wonder.
In addition to the media’s shameful performance, there’s our leading Democrats, who really did, as Dean claims, roll over for Bush on the war. They only began to make an issue of the deception after Dean started gaining traction with his anti-Iraq war message, and even then they’re in a tricky spot: they all still justify their votes, when they manifestly should have known better. Only a few Dems (Fritz Hollings comes to mind) have said flat-out, I voted for the war and I shouldn’t have because I was duped. Would that Kerry just ‘fess up.
What about the Weapons of Mass Destruction? Even those shells found by the Danes lask week and paraded as having residue of blister gas have proven negative for chemicals. Where is the backlash? Where’s the scandal? Where’s the public outcry?
Are there going to be hearings on this or what? What are we as Democrats doing to get this issue out into the debate?
Pessimism confirmed! I see that the CBS News Web site headlined this poll “Bush’s Approval Sinking,” but the NYT (much more important) had the more equivocal and therefore “objectively pro-Bush” (ha ha) “Poll Bolsters Bush on Terrorism but Finds Doubts on Economy.”
Neither the article nor the headline are really out of line (like USAT’s puff piece), because the numbers ARE equivocal. Still, the news about Bush’s approval sinking doesn’t show up until paragraph three. Buried further in the data or the graphs are two other numbers that are very negative for Bush: his historically high disapproval rating (45 percent) and the re-elect matchups showing a negative two percent against an unnnamed Dem.
The Pessimist here: But how will the press play all this? I see that NYT headlined it properly (Bush Support Sinking), but will the rest of the media follow suit? I mean, let’s not forget that Ruy pointed out USAT’s astonishginly dishonest headline and story from their poll last week: something like Bush Approval Soaring, but you had to go to their Web site and look at the raw data to find out that his approval had actually sunk 3 points.
And let’s not forget Time magazine’s wonderful cover story on Dean last week, the one about all the doubts about his electability, the one that didn’t bother to inform readers until the third-to-last paragraph that their own poll showed Dean only six points behind Bush, and running ahead of the rest of the Dem pack in one-to-one matchups.
I pretty much agree with Scout.
The thing people are learning about the Bush administration is that the good news, be it about the economy or Iraq or whatever, never stays good, whence the smaller and smaller bounces. You can be spun only so many times before you stop placing any credit in it. Bush is very close to quota with most Americans.
The Chopped Down Christmas Tree continues…
Since 9/11, Bush has had huge peaks followed by slow declines. Each one, however, peaks smaller and declines faster than the last; we may have seen the absolute last “branch” of the tree, if you will, with the Saddam Capture, and I think the Mars Initiative was an attempt to get more “bounce”. But there wasn’t, and this is a good sign. In an election year, domestic ideas are key, and Bush doesn’t have any- and with the deficit looking like it is, I think people might actually get sick of hearing “taxcuttaxcuttaxcut” as a sound domestic policy.
Great blog, by the way.
One of the indicators that it would evaporate quickly was that in the December poll (which I thought I had around here somewhere, but can’t find so figure my like of hard figures ) when respondents were asked:
SPLIT HALF – ASK EITHER 53 OR 54
53. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 51% | Not Worth It 41% | DK/NA 8%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 47% | Not Worth It 43% | DK/NA 10%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 54% | Not Worth It 37% | DK/NA 9%
54. Do you think result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 41% | Not Worth It 53% | DK/NA 6%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 39% | Not Worth It 54% | DK/NA 6%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 44% | Not Worth It 49% | DK/NA 7%
When Saddam was taken out of the equation more people (nearly a majority) said – “Not Worth It”. This was right at the time of the capture. So it was clear that as Iraq returned to being about an ugly occupation in a country that seemed fairly ungrateful for their liberation, that wasn’t speeding towards democracy and less about eliminating public enemy number two – then Saddam’s capture would not provide sustaining political capital.
One of the indicators that it would evaporate quickly was that in the December poll (which I thought I had around here somewhere, but can’t find so figure my like of hard figures ) when respondents were asked:
SPLIT HALF – ASK EITHER 53 OR 54
53. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 51% | Not Worth It 41% | DK/NA 8%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 47% | Not Worth It 43% | DK/NA 10%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 54% | Not Worth It 37% | DK/NA 9%
54. Do you think result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 41% | Not Worth It 53% | DK/NA 6%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 39% | Not Worth It 54% | DK/NA 6%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 44% | Not Worth It 49% | DK/NA 7%
When Saddam was taken out of the equation more people (nearly a majority) said – “Not Worth It”. This was right at the time of the capture. So it was clear that as Iraq returned to being about an ugly occupation in a country that seemed fairly ungrateful for their liberation, that wasn’t speeding towards democracy and less about eliminating public enemy number two – then Saddam’s capture would not provide sustaining political capital.