The fear of President Donald Trump’s steady erosion of democratic norms is causing an unusual uptick in cross-party organizing, as Democrats and Republicans quietly join forces to bring back a political center, according to a Thursday New York Times report.
Though much of the collaboration reportedly happens in secret meetings and private email correspondence, some of the network’s efforts have affected real change, including amicus briefs its members filed to block the AT&T/Time Warner merger and the bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller, for which members had lobbied.
Per the Times, this bipartisan coalition is quietly readying national protests should Trump egregiously infringe on Mueller’s work as one of its primary groups, Patriots and Pragmatists, watches its numbers rise. Another way for these people to convene is called the “Meeting for the Concerned,” a semimonthly and confidential forum.
Ian Bassin, a former Obama White House lawyer, told the Times of the real risk that exists for Republicans to get involved in distinctly anti-Trump endeavors. “There is a troubling dynamic happening where anytime a conservative expresses concerns, they get branded a Never Trumper and are excommunicated from the American right,” he said.
Nevertheless, as these groups’ ranks swell and discussion ranges from the ideals of democracy to funding a centrist challenger to Trump in 2020, a new brand of bipartisanship flourishes just under the surface of a historically fractured and contentious political climate.
The Deep State at work!
Otherwise known as the rule of law.
"where anytime a conservative expresses concerns, they get branded a Never Trumper and are excommunicated "
Might be a clue you are backing the wrong horse then.
"Somewhere over the rainbowwww…’ Unless and until Republican ‘leadership’ steps up to their constitutional plate, nothing will change.
Will believe it when I see it, and just for the record a trend piece in the NYT is not evidence. It’s been long noted by Jack Shafer and others that the Times is very liberal, shall we say, with evidence of what’s a trend. Some staffer hears a bartender say “people aren’t drinking vodka any more,” or someone elses notices something on the street–two people in two days wearing polka dots, or whatever–and two weeks later it’s in the Style section with the official imprimatur of being a thing. Probably the best example of this was a piece years ago that claimed fashionable women on bicycles was a growing trend. Shafer pointed out the thin to nonexistent evidence for this trend, but stories like this sail through the editing process with little skepticism applied and no pushback from anyone but the occasional cranky media critic. It’s not fake. It’s just sloppy and complacent. So I guess we’ll see, but I’d say this doesn’t mean much standing alone.
I don’t believe it. People have been claiming to start a new “moderate”, “bipartisan”, “nonpartisan”, “pragmatic”, etc. movement for years. Nobody has the political capital to make it happen. It’s perfectly fine if some politicians want to have semi-monthly dinner parties but we shouldn’t expect that anything will change.