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Trump Bypasses Ryan and McConnell; Cuts Deal with the Real Congressional Leaders
So here’s why PDT bypassed Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and went to work with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the debt increase: What do you do when you’re a customer and an employee isn’t doing his job? You demand to talk to their supervisor. Which is essentially what Trump did, he went to the people who are actually running the House and Senate.
Ryan and McConnell are all butt-hurt now, but seriously, what was their plan anyway? They were going to cave to the Democrats eventually, they always do. Trump just forced them to cut to the chase.
Congressional Republicans (apart from the Freedom Caucus) are in a perpetual conundrum because they actually want the same things as Congressional Democrats: bigger Government, more spending, mass immigration and cheap labor, and favors for their cronies. But Republican constituencies do not want these things. So, the trick for Republicans like Ryan and McConnell is that they have to fool the voters into thinking they’re against what they are actually for, and for what they are actually against.
It’s much easier for them to do that as Kabuki opposition; they can put forth all kinds of legislation… Obamacare repeal, border security, even modest spending cuts… knowing that Democrats will stop them and then they can shrug and say “Well, we tried.” (This is what is known as “Failure Theater.”)
But when they are the majority in both houses of Congress with a Republican president, it’s a harder for them to advance a Democrat agenda while pretending to oppose it. But still, they manage.
Published in Politics
As quoted in the article linked in the OP. How is Lankford wrong here?
The person who held the line on Gorsuch was McConnell, with a big assist by Judiciary Chair Grassley.
Again, I voted for McConnell twice. I also voted for Rand Paul once. That doesn’t mean I never criticize him.
But why criticize him for this? Or the huge crap sandwich he ate over nearly a decade dealing with Reid and Obama. He did some pretty amazing stuff from the Minority position to block Obama’s insane leftist agenda. And for that he gets roasted, daily, by his fellow “conservatives” (the quotations are relevant).
Because McConnell insisted on the Senate writing its own health care bill. He, unlike Ryan, made it clear that he didn’t want the President’s help. He didn’t get the job done, and where I come from (the same place McConnell comes from), if you don’t get the job done, being criticized is the least of your worries. Am I supposed to kiss McConnell’s behind for the rest of my life, because he did the obvious and told the Dem’s what they could do with their SCOTUS nominee? Thank you, Mitch, but what have you done for me lately?
President-elect Hillary Clinton would have laughed her butt off the day after election day when Mitch McConnell looked into the camera and uttered in his monotone voice, “We are ready to hold hearings on Merrick Garland.” She would have summarily replaced him with a younger, crazier ACLU radical. Donald Trump gets most of the credit for putting Gorsuch on the court. If you’re going to say that any Republican could have beaten Hillary, I’m not so sure, and neither is Michael Barone.