Top O’ the Briefing
Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. (In preparation for a whirlwind book tour, the Sine Qua Non Sequitur is distributing homemade taco seasoning to itinerant unicyclists.)
I came of age politically just as Ronald Reagan was elected president. That kind of thing can give a young conservative a false sense of optimism about the future. Reagan was so much larger than life that he made the whole Republican Party seem stronger for a while. “Seem” is the operative word there. As I was to be reminded repeatedly after Reagan left office, Republicans in Washington all too often behaved like a gathering of jellyfish.
It was almost understandable when the Democrats were in the majority in both the Senate and House. In the ensuing post-Reagan decades, however, the GOP would often seem even more timid when in the majority. Republicans can be marvelous agitators and full of big ideas when they aren’t in charge. Give them a few committee chairs, and they’re sedated lambs.
To be sure, every generation has one or two high-ranking Republicans who aren’t rollover squishes, but they are almost always balanced out by Lisa Murkowski types who love to shiv their own.
President Trump is doing his level best to overhaul the culture in the Grand Old Party and give it a permanent spine. That’s not an overnight fix, and every important bit of legislation still runs the risk of being torpedoed by a handful of Republicans who believe that repeatedly falling in with the Dems is “principled.” While I have no interest in the GOP becoming a hive mind like the Democrats, it would be nice if our renegades could at least be occasionally useful, especially given the current state of mental unwellness among the Democrats.
Senate Republicans finally got something right on Wednesday, but it was a close call. This is from Sarah
This is starting to feel like a broken record, but last week, I reported that the United States Senate voted on a bipartisan War Powers resolution aimed at limiting the Donald Trump administration’s ability to conduct further strikes in or against Venezuela without congressional approval. It was the third effort on such a measure, and the first time it actually advanced for further debate and consideration.
All of the Democrats voted for it, as did five Republicans: Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).
It’s amazing what a little pressure will do. On Wednesday evening, the Senate took another vote on the War Powers resolution, and this time, there was a 50-50 tie. All Democrats voted for it again. Collins, Murkowski, and, of course, Paul didn’t budge, but Young and Hawley switched sides and voted with the GOP.
Yeah, it is often like pulling teeth out of a Bengal tiger’s mouth with this bunch. Still, they figured this one out. That does happen more often now that Trump is large and in charge for his second go-round in the Oval Office. I would prefer that the Democrats not get within sniffing distance of any kind of victory these days, but we’d need a bigger majority for that.
That’s another thing — the window of opportunity to accomplish anything of substance in Congress might slam shut after November. That makes the reflexive anti-Trump votes by Murkowski, Collins, and Paul all the more tedious. This is the wrong time to be voting with the people who are on the wrong side of history.
Regardless of the outcome of the midterms, President Trump will no doubt continue his efforts to turn the Republican Party into a well-oiled machine that knows how to govern when given the chance. As I have written many times, Trump is also teaching the party how to win in the face of unhinged and relentless opposition. My fervent hope is that he not only has continued success, but that it sticks long after he is out of public life.
Like Reagan, Trump is also larger than life. Trump has a more functional party around him, though. He also has some worthy successors on the bench. I think we can all degree that George H.W. Bush did not do many favors for President Reagan’s legacy. Worse yet, it was the Bush Republicans who made the party addicted to being accommodating and weak for decades. If the Trump Republicans can gain a foothold in the party beyond his time in office, we may just be able to keep the Dems’ socialist wolves at bay.
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