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.
What I really want to hear is that Bush’s intensive negative ad campaign ($6 million?) in the swing states is not working. Then I think we will know his goose is cooked. I have heard that the 527 campaigns plus Kerry are matching the Bush effort.
What a relief. Why is it that the political coloration of the organizations sponsoring or conducting the polls (NBC, WSJ, Fox) always seems to result in bias? How do their subjective wishes seem to get into the polls?
Here’s the commercial that will win the election (based on real footage, I’ve seen it):
Video:
Bush sitting at Booker Elementary on Sept. 11, 2001
VO:
On September 11th 2001, President Bush was in Florida at the Booker Elementary school for a planned photo op. By the time he arrived he already knew the first tower of the World Trade Center had been attacked. He proceeded with the photo op. In this unedited footage you can see the moment Andrew Card, his chief of staff notifies the President of the second attack.
Video:
Card leans in to whisper to Bush
VO:
Card is quoted as saying, ”
A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack”
Watch the President’s reaction.
(key over the video) HE KNOWS
VO:
The president went on with the photo op for a minimum of another 9 minutes (some witnesses say as long as twenty minutes), asking no questions, not acting, not responding to the crisis. At the same time Vice President Cheney was taken to a secure location. Weren’t the children potentially at risk? Wasn’t the president a target?
Would YOU call this steady leadership?
________________________
If you’d like to see the actual raw footage of Bush at Booker the file is large..25 megs…
but it can be downloaded here
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/bushbook.mov
I took at look at the ARG poll, and I was fascinated by two of the findings: first, that Bush’s support among REPUBLICANS is softening. 17 percent of Republicans polled disapproved of Bush’s handling of the economy. Double-digit disapproval among Republicans on the economy cannot be spun into good news for Bush; second, among Independents, Nader actually draws support away from BUSH! I think that if Kerry can avoid a major, and I mean major scandal, he’s in an extraordinarily strong position to take the White House in November.
C. Ama
This may be slightly off on a tangent, but it is very timely given the recent events in Madrid. I am wondering about Bush’s consistently favorable ratings regarding “fighting terrorism” and his continual lead over Kerry regarding his ability to combat terrorism. I have heard repeatedly that a new terrorist attack could be an “external event” that would send people scurrying back to Bush, because of their confidence in his ability to fight it.
But it seems to me that another terrorist attack, particularly of the kind that we saw in Madrid (where two previously distinct terrorist groups may be acting together) is very strong evidence that Bush is not winning the war on terrorism. He is using poor judgment, his ideological bent is causing us to approach the matter incorrectly and his domestic “starve the beast” plan is limiting our ability to execute the war properly. I realize this is all speculation, but at what point do we believe that the public will turn on W on this issue (like they have all the others) and realize that he is botching this one too?
The thing I find most interesting here is the rumblings of discontent among Republicans about the economy and jobs. It would be interesting to see how this correlates with household income — my guess is that the discontent among Republicans is mainly among people of average-to-below-average income, who are beginning to figure out that, while they may be in line with Bush’s social conservatism, their economic interests aren’t being well served by the Bush administration.
Greg