Will The Whole GOP Go Down With The Good Ship Trumpanzee In 2020?

Sunday morning, we took a quick look at the Republican power play in Wisconsin, where, having lost complete control of the executive branch, they have now called a special lame duck session before Scott Walker is shown the door, to hobble Democratic governor-elect Tony Evers and attorney general-elect Josh Kaul. A couple of hours ago, the Associated Press reported that they were moving full steam ahead and damned the torpedoes voters, shifting power to the GOP-controlled Legislature and allowing Walker to make one last major mark on the state’s political landscape after he lost re-election. Classy as always. And it isn't just Wisconsin. The Republican legislature is up to the same bullshitin Michigan. There, Republicans in a legislature they control only because of gerrymandering, they're working to cut the legitimate power of the just elected governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. An editorial in the Lansing State Journal yesterday urges the Republicans to not use a lame duck session to override the will of the voters. "Another legislative lame duck session; another ridiculous power play by Republicans. The bills currently being decided in darkness-- with little to no transparency and insufficient time for public debate-- are too important to ignore. The Michigan Legislature is blatantly ignoring the will of the people." And this one isn't just about screwing over the newly-elected executive branch.

In September, the Republican-led Legislature voted into law two citizen-initiated statues-- one raising the minimum wage to $12 and another to require all employers provide paid sick leave. The Legislature effectively blocked the decision-making power of the electorate on these issues with the full intent of dismantling them post-election.

That dismantling is happening now, with a false urgency and secrecy that sends a clear message to every voter: What we, the Legislature, want is more important than what you want.

That's absurd. And every Michigander should be outraged.

This behavior is unacceptable. Regardless of where people stand on issues, bullying through controversial legislation in a lame duck session is not the appropriate way to legislate.

  Among the most offensive changes being pushed through the Legislature:

• Bills effectively gutting the September laws by moving the minimum wage date back to 2030, separating out tipped workers with a raise to only $4 per hour and halving the requirement for paid sick leave passed the Senate Government Operations committee with a 3-2 vote along party lines and the full Senate by similar majority.
• After less than an hour of testimony, the same committee passed a bill to complete a deal with Enbridge to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac and place authority over Line 5 with the Mackinac Bridge Authority, again, with a 3-2 vote along party lines.
• Proposals to undermine powers of the incoming Democratic Attorney General, Secretary of State and Governor-- including provisions to remove oversight of campaign finance law from the Secretary of State’s office and allow the Legislature to intervene in legal proceedings directly instead of through the Attorney General.
• Introduced legislation to undo certain provisions from all three ballot proposals-- recreational marijuana, redistricting and Promote the Vote-- that were passed by a majority of Michigan voters only last month, including prohibition of growing marijuana at home and limiting voter registration to within 14 days of an election.

These are all important issues. Why the hurry to pass them now?

The House and Senate will have Republican majorities again next session. Yes, they'll have to contend with a Democratic governor come Jan. 1. But if these bills truly are in the best interests of Michiganders, let legislators work for them in open sessions in the spirit of collaboration and representative government.

Instead, the Republicans opted for a mean-spirited, heavy-handed approach that clearly shows their disdain for the individual voter.

Yesterday, Jonathan Martin wrote in the NY Times that though, they suffered a grievous defeat at the hands of the voters last month, the Republicans have no intention-- or even ability-- to institute any kind of a course correction. "[N]early a month after the election," wrote Martin, "there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout." Trump is the albatross around their necks. When will they throw him overboard?

Despite the nice drawing by Nancy Ohanian, the answer is probably "never." Thye'll go down with him again in 2020. "The quandary some Republicans acknowledge," wrote Martin, "is that the party’s leaders are constrained from fully grappling with the damage Mr. Trump inflicted with those voters, because he remains popular with the party’s core supporters and with the conservatives who will dominate the caucus even more in the next Congress. But now a cadre of G.O.P. lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly and Democrats gained the most seats they had since 1974."

Republican women-- the ones Martin spoke with are Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Susan Brooks (R-IN), Ann Wagner (R-MO) and retiring Trump critics Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)-- think it's because their party hasn't been welcoming-- to put it mildly-- to women. "If we don’t learn some lessons from this election we will not be a majority party," said Wagner, who represents suburban St. Louis, calling for a caucus that "looks more like America." But the GOP problem goes beyond the knee-jerk party sexism. The sexism doesn't cover the outrageous attitude behind the power plays in Wisconsin and Michigan. That mindset, more than anything, is what seems to have soured independent voters on Republicans.

Many of the lawmakers who lost their races or did not run again say the party has a profound structural challenge that incumbents are unwilling to fully face: Mr. Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women.

With most of the Republicans who lost hailing from suburban seats, those who remain represent red-hued districts where the president is still well-liked.

“Now the party is Trump,” said Representative Tom Rooney of Florida, who at 48 decided to retire, “so we follow his lead.”

Or as Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, who is also retiring, put it: “It’s clear to me why we lost 40 seats; it was a referendum on the president, but that’s an extremely difficult proclamation for people to make because if they were to say that they’d get the wrath of the president.”

Beyond the eggshell-walking that Mr. Trump demands, the depth of the Republican defeat was initially obscured because of the late counting in some House races, and because the G.O.P. gained seats in the Senate while some of the Democrats’ most-heralded statewide candidates lost.

Yet there is a deep reluctance among the leaders to discuss what went wrong.

...One who did was Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois. “That was disgusting,” he said, recalling how other presidents acknowledged defeat after their party lost the House. “I think back to Obama and Bush, both admitting it when they lost, accepting that with some grace.”

There has not been, Mr. Kinzinger said, “any party lookback or leadership lookback and it does worry some of us.”

What alarms Republicans even more is that the possibility that disgust with Mr. Trump will be uncurable in 2020, when he will likely be on the ballot, no matter the party’s agenda.

“It was a personality vote on the president, not an issue vote, and that doesn’t change,” Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas said of the affluent voters in his Kansas City-area district who voted him out.

This sort of cold-eyed assessment has Republicans already expressing concern that more of their colleagues may retire rather than run again in 2020-- and that recruiting top-flight candidates could prove even more challenging going into the next campaign.

Yep... that and more premature retirements. And a party that becomes increasingly radicalized-- pleasing the hardcore base and rapidly turning normal people off. Obviously it's early, but it's hard to see 2020 shaping up to be anything but catastrophic for the Republicans. Even if the GOP isn't, Putin may be in the middle of a Trump course correction. As reported Sunday by the Daily Beast, Veronika Krasheninnikova, Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies & Initiatives, Advisor to the Director General of Russia Today and a member of the Kremlin-appointed Russian Public Chamber, wrote for Arguments and Facts after Trump canceled his meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires that Russia can now give up on the U.S. and "should have never trusted Trump to begin with." Krasheninnikova opined that "as long as Trump is in power, nothing positive can happen in the relations between the United States and Russia," concluding that "Trump is a rock hanging around Russia's neck." Nothing like that gets published without explicit approval of Putin.

As Sean Sullivan pointed out in the Washington Post this morning, Jeff Flake had admitted, if ruefully, that "This is the president's party now. It really is. I don't think you can read it any other way." He mused that embracing Trump after his 2016 win would have been the "path to re-election, but I couldn't do it... Whether I accomplish anything or not by my opposition to some of his policies and some of his behavior... I just couldn't do that."

The electoral contours of 2020 are expected to prompt Republican senators to keep relations warm with the president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his top deputy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) are both up for re-election in states the president is an early favorite to win.

The risks of crossing Trump are in plain sight. He has aggressively targeted his GOP critics. "I retired him. I'm very proud of it. I did the country a great service," Trump said of Flake the day after the election. He has mocked Corker on Twitter as "Liddle' Bob Corker."

The threat of a Trump-backed primary challenger also looms over Republicans inclined to call out the president publicly. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) experienced this in June when he was defeated by Katie Arrington, a state legislator Trump endorsed hours before the polls closed.

Sanford is spending his final days in Congress warning that turning the GOP over to Trump could lead to the party spending a long time in the House minority as it abandons its principles in favor of pleasing a base of voters deeply committed to the president.

When Arrington lost to Democrat Joe Cunningham in the general election, Sanford quickly drew attention to the upset in his conservative district. He labeled it a "wake-up call" for the GOP and urged Republicans to step away from Trump in a New York Times op-ed that was published the week after the election.

"I continue to believe that the Trump phenomenon is a temporary phenomenon," Sanford said an interview. But he added, "I woudn't have guessed it would last as long as it has."

Asked what he felt he accomplished by taking on Trump, Sanford replied, "Not that much-- I lost." Like Flake, he said he felt it was the right thing to do given his issue with Trump's behavior and policies.

"It's my belief that where he's taking our party is in a dangerous direction, both in electoral consequence, which we saw with the midterms, and, more significantly, with regard to the conservative movement," said Sanford.

Democrats gained at least 39 House seats in the midterms, as Republican candidates fared poorly in many purple districts where the unpopularity of the president and the GOP brand dragged them down.

The Republicans who won will mostly represent conservative districts where the president is well-regarded. House Republicans picked Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is friendly with Trump, to lead them next year.

Even before the election, the ranks of House Republicans criticizing Trump started thinning. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, one of the most vocal Republican Trump critics in the House, resigned his seat earlier this year.

Some Republican activists who do not like Trump have expressed frustration at his enduring command in the party. Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, said he was hopeful that Trump critics like himself would be on the right side of history, but that "history is moving really slowly right now."

It's unclear who, if anyone, will emerge as the leader of the Republican resistance to Trump next year on Capitol Hill. Sens. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Tim Scott (R-SC) and Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) have spoken out when they have disagreed with the president. Flake said he believes Sen.-elect Mitt Romney of Utah will be willing to call out the president when he thinks he is wrong.

But Romney has not been as sharply critical of Trump as he once was. And the political risks of developing a reputation for challenging the president are as acute as ever.

"I'm still hoping the party is going to come back to its senses one day, but I don't see it happening in the near term," said Cullen.