The conventional wisdom in Washington this week is that Senate Republicans are finally finding their footing against Donald Trump. They see the US President as a growing electoral liability, the headlines say, and they’re starting to undermine his vanity projects.
But even the senators themselves don’t really believe this.
Privately, my former colleagues on Capitol Hill acknowledge that they’re no match for this President. What they see, and what they’ll admit to off the record, is that the last embers of resistance within the Republican Party are being snuffed out. GOP leaders won’t stand up to the man who’s got them at political gunpoint, and it’s a harbinger of the next phase of Trumpism.
Trump’s own advisers are saying the quiet part out loud. Axios captured it bluntly this week, when they reported that the President doesn’t much care whether the Republicans lose control of Congress in this autumn’s midterms. He’d prefer a win, but he isn’t planning around it. He’s planning around what comes after the midterms, which is set to be an all-out, two-year “finale” in which he intends to wield power in ways he’s heretofore avoided, or only flirted with.
Shorts
