Shot: “We love watching the spats on their side,” a Republican Senate aide told me. “Right now, believe it or not, we are much more unified than they are –even our moderates are on board.” —Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal
Chaser: This, this, this, this and this. And others
Much of what transpired this past week has been baked into a dynamic that’s existed in the GOP for a very long time. It was always going to be impossible for House Republicans to get a budget through the Senate that the right flank of their party didn’t reject. Democrats, in my view, made a huge error in not recognizing this — that they still control about three-fourths of the decision making apparatus — and adopting the GOP view that spending, for whatever reason, must be cut.
Republicans claimed a huge mandate, over-reached and will now have to scale back their ambitions. Viewed in isolation, it looks like a huge cave. But viewed over a span of months, they achieved much larger policy gains than a party in their position should, and Democrats have themselves to blame for that.
But, credit where due — once that was set in stone, Schumer played the chess game pretty flawlessly.
