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.
Cranky Observer–
I am starting to wonder the same thing. Rove grossly underestimated the amount of money the
Democrats would raise when he laid out this campaign two years ago. I think we can definitely expect some negative tricks and meanness, but as far as having a pulse on the American people, I think Karen Hughes is more the person we should be watching out for. Has anyone else noticed that Bush has been better since she rejoined the campaign in earnest? She definitely has the emotional pulse of some of Bush’s base. Old stories here in Texas were of the rivalry between Hughes and Rove…wonder if they are true.
The Democrats just need to move quickly as these things arrive, or throw out some things of their own first, so that Bush is more on the defensive…
I think Rove’s recent appearances on talk shows, etc…shows that they are getting a little panicky.
We just need to keep working–fast and furious!
> We can be assured that Rove’s end game
> ground war will be ruthless, unethical, viscious and
> full-bore.
I have a harder and harder time accepting the “Rove as evil genius”, with the emphasis on genius, meme. As Markos has observed, Kerry managed to evaporate $200 million worth of pre-nomination spending in 90 minutes at the first debate. And if Rove has some genius-like October surprise he has exactly 16 days and ticking to pull it off, which isn’t much.
Cranky
Like Teresa, I’m a little concerned. After reading the NYT Bush profile by Suskind, I’m also fearful that this info from Rove could be a strategic sideways leak. There was some scary talk in that article about volumes of new registrations coming from churches, and a figure of 4 million adamantly pro-Bush evangelicals who WERE NOT registered in 2000.
We can be assured that Rove’s end game ground war will be ruthless, unethical, viscious and full-bore.
Let’s not let ourselves be lulled by ANY Kerry numbers’ strength into not giving our fullest GOTV effort — and then some.
I think the 4 point margin to protect against the expected uncommitted/independent break for the challenger makes great sense. It’s just logical given the well established pattern among late deciders.
We must be on the look-out for whatever Rove has in mind to get himself a 4 point margin in the next two weeks. Right now he is either tied or down a couple of points.
It seems clear that Rove needs an actual lead and an average turnout. My only question is, what day will the inevitable terror alert come out—-1, 2, or 3 days before the election? And will it specifically involve Ohio? This seems the most likely October surprise.
The question everybody needs to be asking is where is Bush going to get any NEW voters?? Remember he lost the populat vote in 2000 and there hasn’t been any announcements about any voting block that has changed their minds about him since 2000.. Its just not in the numbers and he know its.. I do believe, millions of republicans will crossover and vote for Kerry..
Sounds like classic Rove disinfo.
My read is the opposite: the Republican campaign on Kerry has sowed enough doubts in swing voters’ minds, that unless Kerry is at least 2 points ahead going into election day then he might well lose.
Also there is the Ralph Nader factor.
It seems to be coming down to Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. Of which Kerry seems to be closing the deal with PA, but losing OH and Fla. W. Virginia seems to already be gone.
WI is the other likely defector to the Bush camp: that remark about Lambert v. Lambeau field has cost Kerry big time with Green Bay fans, apparently (Kerry got it wrong).
I hope I am wrong, and I sense real disquiet about Bush amongst the (Republican) parents of my American friends (in London) but the world opinion is so solidly against Bush (except in Israel) that I think it blinds us to the reality.
I wait for Rove’s October Surprise, and expect it will be a doozy.
Does anyone know why http://www.pollingreport.com only reports the “likely voters” poll numbers on their website and not the “registered voters” poll numbers?
Dear Alan,
My first reaction was to this inside scoop that the Bush campaign believes it needs a 4 point lead going in was elation. My second was to suspect that that this was a rumor purposely placed by the Bush campaign. Mr. Rove is famous for this type of tactic. Please don’t let hope distract us from working our tails off for the next three weeks!
Ruy, very interesting comment from Rove.
Check this out…
Oct 17, 2004
John Kerry for President
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/17sun1.html?oref=login&pagewanted=1&hp
Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It’s on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president.
Was it not Rove who, way back in 2000, raised eyebrows when he said that Bush would, “win in a walk”? What a difference four years make, eh?
That’s really not clear enough. If Bush has a 4 pt lead in the nat’l head to heads, but less than that in the swing states that give Kerry 270, then Bush won’t win.
Apparently Rove doesn’t want to talk about the “T” word (turnout) either. Consideriing the margins Bush had in 2000 in the last week, what he really needs is fairly consistent margins across polls, and possibly one of 5-8 points.
Question on polls.
The campaigns seem to have sharper, and perhaps different, polling results. I infer this from comments such as that which this post attributes to Karl Rove. It must mean that Rove/BC04 have a different idea of who the “likely voters” are than that of the nationally published pollsters.
Why is that so?