It is important to see a few different developments coming together today up on Capitol Hill. As you likely saw there was a mini-revolt today among Senate Republicans over Trump’s slush fund and, to a secondary degree, over the ballroom. Because they wouldn’t agree to back the slush fund, they just left and went on recess. Not exactly a huge profile in courage. But it’s also at least delayed Trump’s new ICE funding bill. The ballroom, the slush fund, the ongoing retribution tour — these are all Trump’s big obsessions right now, as I noted this morning. But in something like a meta-ten-car pile-up, the different self-soothing efforts are bumping into each other. Trump just knee-capped Sen. Cassidy in Louisiana (he lost his primary) and Sen. Cornyn (endorsed primary challenger Ken Paxton). Two careers ended. Two senators who are really embittered. Trump also blindsided other Republican senators when he endorsed Paxton. They had no advance warning. Totally out of the blue. Party discipline is a thing. But you do it wisely. Trump’s made Cassidy, Tillis and perhaps now even Cornyn into chaos agents going into the midterms.
The point is, the retribution tour is colliding with the building spree and the Deserving Fascists Slush Fund. None of them have anything to do with helping the GOP in the midterms. The wheels are coming off.
It’s one of my bywords that all power is unitary. You don’t have it abroad and lack it at home, or have it on one issue and not on another. You’re always losing power or gaining it. And for a president, the gains and losses apply across the spectrum. There’s simply no strategy here. There’s impulse. There’s executive self-soothing. He’s reacting to his declining popularity at home by doing things that are making him less popular. He’s trying to push things through the Senate while antagonizing and assaulting the senators whose votes he needs.
These senators aren’t standing on any kind of principle. They’re looking at the midterms and trying to prevent their incumbents from having to defend payoffs to guys who assaulted cops, hit them with flag polls, took dumps in various congressional offices. They also don’t want to force their incumbents to give a billion dollars to build Trump’s ballroom while the voters are overwhelmingly focused on high gas prices and inflation.
