Trump Is Winning: The president ran on disrupting Washington – and he’s doing just that. – By Susan Milligan (usnews.com) / Oct 27 2017
Donald Trump’s tanking approval ratings would lead most campaign operatives to the smelling salts, or maybe the Scotch bottle. His stalled legislative agenda would make any domestic policy adviser experience the five stages of grief several times over. And the president’s almost gleeful taunting of an impulsive foreign dictator has both foreign policy experts and members of Congress worried that a verbal provocation might lead to an actual military conflict, one which could cost many lives, destabilize the region, and imperil U.S. relations its allies.
In Trump’s hyper-confident verbiage, however, the president is winning. Bigly. He spent the first half hour of a private lunch with Senate Republicans talking about his accomplishments in office, attendees say. Trump told reporters that the session – one which typically is spent strategizing to get the party’s agenda passed by the Senate – was a “love fest,” with lawmakers giving him three standing ovations.
Democrats, publicly, and some Republicans, privately, shake their heads at what they see as a fantastical belief system by a president who seems to be unaware of the litany of troubles he faces, and what it means for his presidency and his legacy. How can he possibly think he’s winning, they marvel, when his administration is under investigation on several fronts and Washington and his agenda are in such disarray? But on Trump’s umbrella campaign promise, the shake Washington and the establishment to their core, Trump has been very successful, observers note.
“It’s like waving the red flag in front of the bull,” says presidential scholar George C. Edwards, author of numerous books on the persuasion powers of the U.S. commander-in-chief. Trump’s instinct is to fight back and disrupt, without a policy end game necessarily in mind, he says. “I don’t think it’s a fundamental strategic position. Not, ‘I’ve got a plan here, and my plan includes insulting some senators.'”
Adds Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., “this is the most dysfunctional Congress I’ve seen in 20 years, and it’s because of the uncertainty from day to day of what the president might say or tweet. That’s why this place right now is so fragile.”
Legislative accomplishments may be flimsy for Trump, but on the matter of blowing up the way Washington works, the rogue president has delivered. His own party is deeply divided and on edge, with leadership unsure of how much support they can get form the GOP caucuses, and individual members worried about primary challenges encouraged by Trump’s political henchmen. Congress is operating with minimal regular order and procedure, largely abandoning the traditional path of legislative deliberation and moving even complex bills directly to the floor.
When the GOP does get into the weeds of bill-writing, Trump erupts with an unsolicited comment or tweet – and contradicts himself, exasperating or maddening Republican lawmakers. That contributed to the failure to undo Obamacare, Jones notes. “How in the world can you push the House to pass a health care bill, then have a rally at the White House, and then ten days later say it’s a ‘mean bill?'” Jones asks, referring to Trump’s back-and-forth on the GOP bills.
The same behavior is complicating negotiations on a very contentious tax reform bill. Tax overhaul is difficult even under the best of circumstances, but is especially difficult this year, with Democrats not likely to vote for anything the Republicans come up with, and the GOP internally divided over what tax deductions and loopholes should be changed to make up for the tax cut they’d like to deliver. When word leaked out that the GOP draft would limit how much Americans can contribute tax-free to their 401(k) retirement plans, Trump tweeted that “there will be NO change to your 401(k). This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!” That put GOP leaders, who had been working on the plan on their own, in an awkward and weakened negotiating position, with House Ways and Means Committee chair Kevin Brady, R-Tex., responding that the popular deduction was still on the table.
Those who openly criticize Trump are met with bombastic and aggressive responses. The rest are left to wonder how their responses to the polarizing president will go over in their next campaigns: will they be criticized for not taking him on more directly? Or will the small, but still very loyal Trump base punish them by backing a primary opponent, or by just not showing up to vote in a general election, should they survive the first electoral test?
The Republican senators who have publicly called out Trump, Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, have been slammed with insulting nicknames by the president, along with baseless declarations that Corker and Flake are leaving because Trump and his base didn’t like them (McCain is battling a brain tumor). GOP lawmakers publicly insist that they are just getting on with the nation’s business and attending to their respective state’s needs without paying attention to what cable news food Trump might have prepared that day. “Every morning I scroll Twitter to see what tweets I will have to pretend I did not see later on,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., joked at a recent charity dinner.
But there is also a reluctance among other Republicans to poke the metaphorical bear. Asked about Trump’s provocative style, Rep. Leonard Lance, vulnerable as he runs for re-election as a Republican in blue New Jersey next year, is excruciatingly diplomatic. “That is his nature, and he ran for president with the fact that he was different from other presidential candidates,” Lance says.
When the very well-liked Flake announced his retirement next year, noting his discontent with how disappointed he was in his party’s failure to denounce Trump’s behavior and rhetoric, it was Senate Democrats who loaded praise on Flake. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called his Arizona colleague “one of the finest human beings I’ve met in politics.” That remark was despite the fact that Flake was one of the Democrats’ biggest targets in next year’s elections. Republicans, however, were more circumspect in their farewell wishes, a symbol, Jones says, of GOP skittishness about setting off the president. “The leadership, in my opinion, is too dependent on what the president does,” the conservative North Carolinian says.
Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has declared “a season of war” on the GOP establishment and has pledged to back primary opponents for every Senate Republican incumbent except Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Bannon has actively encouraged contenders who promise to oppose Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as leader. McConnell has been largely supportive of Trump but has issued mild dressings-down, such as reminding Trump that legislation takes time to write and pass on the Hill.
Even Democrats find themselves in something of a bind. The progressive wing of the party is pushing Democrats to advocate for impeachment (Democratic megadonor and environmental activist Tom Steyer this week launched a $10 million TV ad campaign to demand impeachment). Democratic leaders have thus far been content to watch the GOP self-destruct, aware that a call for impeachment could alienate critical parts of the electorate. Impeachment, anyway, would not be politically gettable as long as Republicans control the House.
“You’ve got to remember this is a very delusional personality, and he has learned that spreading that delusion helps him in a very perverse way,” says Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. “He is successful in minimizing the damage to himself financially,” though it’s not clear how long he’ll be able to immunize himself politically, Connolly says. But “this is a very delusional character, and he will take the Republican Party down with him if they’re not careful.”
Comeuppance, if it comes, would not come until next November, when voters weigh in on whether they want Trump/Bannon-style Republicans, establishment GOPers or even – unthinkable just a few months ago – Democrats running Congress. “Successfully suffocating the establishment may well create the ‘new’ Republican Party [Bannon] envisions. It is equally possible that the party that once aspired to be an inclusive ‘big tent’ could become a small yurt,” Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, writes in a recent analysis of the 2018 Senate races. Trump, however, doesn’t have to face voters until 2020, giving him a lot more time to disrupt Washington.
PB/TK – I’ll give POTUS Donnie, yes he is disrupting DC but he’s not “draining the swamp” as lobbyists are still winning the day. Sure he’s flipped over tables when he doesn’t get his way and turned the GOP against itself, but as the big things aren’t getting done it’s the little things, the miniscule legislation that’s causing the most headaches. And, yes, of course Congress should be on swivels because no one wants to be part of his “Twitter Tourette’s” posts
