Kavanaugh, the NYT op-ed, and the failure of Trump-skeptical Republicans
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Some Republicans know Trump is a menace — but can’t bring themselves to act.
The week’s news has been dominated by two stories: Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh ’s confirmation hearings, and the New York Times’s anonymous op-ed from a Trump senior official blasting the president. These two things may seem unrelated, but they are not. Put together, they constitute a damning indictment of the way so-called “Never Trump” Republicans and their fellow travelers in Congress have reacted to a president who they know is unfit for office .
To see why, look at the way three Trump-skeptical Republicans in the Senate — Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker — have reacted to the Times op-ed, which argued that Trump has dangerous policy instincts and an erratic, moody personality (the same picture that emerges from Bob Woodward’s book and the past two years or so of inside-the-White House reporting). Sasse said the piece’s argument is “similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the White House, you know, three times a week.” Flake said he was glad that members of Trump’s top staff, like the op-ed writer, are working to frustrate the president. Corker claimed that “this is what all of us have understood to be the situation from day one.”
But the question the Kavanaugh hearing prompted is this: What are they willing to do, as US senators, knowing that the president is unfit for office? The answer, it seems, is pretty much nothing.
Given that Republicans have only a 51-49 majority in the Senate, a mere two Republican defections could put Kavanaugh’s nomination in serious jeopardy (to a greater or lesser degree depending on where red-state Democrats, like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, come down). Trump really wants Kavanaugh on the Court, and so does the rest of the party. This gives the three Trump-skeptical Republicans cited above a good deal of leverage over the president: the power to withhold their vote on a top Trump and GOP priority unless something is done to reel him in.
They could hold up the nomination until Trump agrees to sign a bill that would prevent him from firing special counsel Robert Mueller (such a bill has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee ). They could demand a passage of a bill restraining Trump’s ability to cavalierly launch a war (Senate Democrats have written such a bill ). They could pass legislation preventing the president from unilaterally withdrawing from trade deals and international organizations like NATO (there is, you guessed it, a Senate bill for that ).
They could demand real Senate investigations into Trump’s conflict of interests, or force him to release his tax returns — the list goes on and on and on.
But the Sasse-Corker-Flake triumvirate hasn’t done any of that. They haven’t even hinted at doing anything like that, despite the obviousness of such a move given that the op-ed prompted focus on Trump’s fitness for office. According to the Vox Senate confirmation tracker, both Sasse and Corker have already voiced support for Kavanaugh’s nomination; Flake is still formally undecided but widely expected to vote yes .
By prioritizing their party’s interests over their duty to act in a crisis that they have acknowledged we’re confronting, the Trump skeptics in the GOP expose their own rhetoric as profoundly hollow.
If this is a crisis, act like it
This isn’t the first time these Republicans have acted like this. Time after time, on issue after issue, Sasse, Corker, and Flake have all voiced criticisms of Trump and then voted for his legislation when the time comes. There has never been any concerted effort to use their leverage to hold Trump accountable, or try to mitigate the consequences of a venal and mercurial man holding the most powerful position in the world.
But there has never been a clearer contrast between what these Republicans say and what they do than there is at this particular moment in time. The two main topics in American public life at the moment are the Supreme Court and the basic unfitness of the president for office. Yet in the name of the former, Republican legislators aren’t acting to do anything about the latter.
If the crisis is as bad as the anonymous Times op-ed writer and these senators say it is, then this isn’t a time for the normal politics of judicial confirmation. It’s a time to subordinate everything to the health and survival of the country: protecting American democracy, and blocking Trump from using his policy powers to endanger national security and the health of the US economy.
And yet confirming Kavanaugh comes first. Tax cuts came first. The Obamacare repeal effort, which all of these men supported , came first. There never seems to be a time when the actual power these men have — the power to block Trump’s legislative priorities — is being used.
Some anti-Trump conservatives think this is the principled thing to do. Commentary’s Noah Rothman , for example, argues that it would be inconsistent or unprincipled for Republicans to put Kavanaugh below combating Trump:
If conservatives were to oppose this nominee not on his merits but to communicate some ancillary message to the White House, they would be guilty of betraying principle and shunning their constitutional prerogatives. In the process, they would sacrifice their scant influence within the Republican Party.
This gets to a pervasive misapprehension about what Trump-skeptical Republicans see as their role at this moment in history. Their conduct suggests that they value consistency over raw power, and that consistency is what irritates those whose politics is entirely situational.
But this has it precisely backward. Voting for Kavanaugh unconditionally is valuing power, GOP control on the Supreme Court, over consistency — consistency with their own stated view of the gravity of the crisis facing the country.
These three senators, if you ask them, would claim to put country over party. But when they warn that the basic health of the country is at stake, and have an opportunity to do something about it, Republican political and policy interests come first.
This is the core of the problem. Republicans, even the ones who are willing to open their eyes to the danger of Trump, think that tax cuts and judges are more important than reining in a president who they fully admit could do serious damage to the country. If even the most Trump-skeptical Republicans are unwilling to entertain the idea of temporarily frustrating the Republican agenda in order to rein in Trump, what hope is there for the rest of the party?
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Jeff Flake is s-o-o-o appropriately named...
Yes, he is. As for the article, I do not really see any crisis of leadership in the White House that would warrant the removal of President Trump. The actual legislation and nominees, he has been pushing for, are common sense ideas and people which is desperately needed in Washington. If any one person or group of people need to be removed from office for insanity, then the entire Democratic Party needs to be removed. They are calling for absolute insanity that would result in the United States of America going the way of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Let's open our borders as the Romans did, which lead to Rome being sacked multiple times by the various Germanic tribes and the end of the Roman Empire. Let's allow anyone into our country as the Byzantine Empire did with the Crusades, that ended up leading to the end of the Byzantine Empire due to Byzantium being sacked and the loss of Greek Fire, which is what had kept the Turks from crossing the Bosporus Strait. Let's get rid pf ICE, the people whose jobs are to keep out invaders posing as civilians along with people who just violate our immigration laws for any other reason; which will result in the United States being invaded even more and the eventual end of the country whose comforts we enjoy, which means we would no longer have those comforts. A vote for Democrats or Socialists like Bernie Sanders will result in the end of the USA and the end to everything we know and love about our country. Because, they advocate for the end of our borders, which means the end of the USA.
Good God, we're still on this ? Seriously? This is how the Left is working for Americans: keep hammering away at that tax return issue.
It's actually a good example of how Trump has behaved since coming to prominence: He ignores democratic traditions.
If there's a rule, Trump's only question is how to get around it. He may ignore it, He may break it.
Every Presidential candidate showed his tax returns. It wasn't law, it was good democratic tradition. Trump ignored it.
Trump's own behavior is despicable... but the fact that so many Americans support his methodical demolition of democratic institutions is... much more worrisome.
Correct. He's not a Democrat.
He was specifically elected to ignore Democratic traditions.
So? It's not as though you would have understood them, anyway.
The fact that you're talking about his tax returns would indicate you don't have a legitimate complaint about his presidency. Is that actually the case?
Please learn the difference between lower-case and upper-case, and then rewrite your Comment. Thank you.
Please learn the meaning of double-entendre, and re-read my comment.
What you mean here is political traditions. He has no need to release his tax returns, in fact, usually it is the opposite requirement. That is you should NEVER release your tax returns; because it contains private information that can be used to steal your identity. Frankly, the idiots who started this tradition, and it is a fairly young tradition since income taxes at the Federal level have only existed for 105 years, should have been kicked out of office just for being stupid. It shouldn't matter to us how a candidate makes/made their personal money. It is also another reason to eliminate the income tax at the Federal level and go to a National Sales Tax.
Exactly. Scumbag desperately needs NOT to release his tax returns. I'm pretty sure Mr. Mueller has them, though.
And, what evidence do you have of that? We know Obama weaponized the IRS and the intelligence community to attack his political opponents and that is a demolition of the very foundation of our democratic institutions. But, that didn't matter; because he was a Democrat...
Please look up the meaning of a "double-entendre" and try again.
Please look up the meaning of "usually" and try again. Jack_TX used the word properly.
LOL. Republicans and conservatives are crazy. It doesn't matter if the president is a thief or a cheat in his personal finances, as long as he delivers goodies for the ideology obsessed right wing base.
Nice twisting of words. Do you know what PII is? Do you know why you don't give out your Social Security number? Do you know why you should actually burn all of your receipts, tax returns, etc. that are outdated? And, the reason I say burn is because it is the only way to truly prevent someone from reassembling the information on the documents, even cross-cut/confetti shredders don't do that.
Nope. Not even close. Jack used the word "democratic" two different ways in a typically lame attempt at irony. A double-entendre uses one word with two entirely different meanings. An example would be the word "prick," and I don't think I need to explain that one any further.
That was ripe BS when it was first charged and now it's stale BS.
.....rightwing nutcases, yes.
Will that be right after hell freezes over or when the great fascist takeover is complete?
You put soil into this machine?
You really need to reread the definition of double entendre, which is a word or phrase that has two different meanings one of which is usually risqué. The phrase "democratic traditions", in the United States has two different meanings. It could mean the traditions of democracy or it could mean the traditions of the Democratic Party.
Not impossible, just highly improbable. If characters are intact, then the document can be recreated; particularly with software designed to reconstruct documents from shredded papers. Burning is the only guaranteed method of making a document impossible to reconstruct.
Read it again.
Actually, never mind. You're caught out and won't ever admit it, so let's just move on.
I can see some value in the tax returns, but I'm sure not going to require it, and at the end of the day, I'm a lot more interested in things like policy and leadership. I don't know how old that so-called tradition is, but at minimum we know it doesn't predate the 16th Amendment.
I think it's also really important to remember that Trump was elected because he eschews traditional norms. Traditional government was failing us. The whole point was to try something different. I think it's really either disingenuous or ignorant to keep complaining that Trump doesn't do things they way they have always been done, as if that was a failing. His supporters consider it a feature and I am forced to agree that there is some virtue in that.
Legally no he doesn't. But, "the opposite requirement"? Um, every presidential candidate for the last 40 years has released their tax returns, except trump. If that doesn't strike you as odd, something is wrong. Why would he NOT release them? Because he has something to hide? Yep. He said himself just weeks after announcing that he was running for president that there were things in his tax returns that would cause him to lose the election. He clearly has a lot to hide. If he didn't, he would have released them.
But I agree, I am 99% sure Mueller has them.
Nope, but then the investigation isn't over, is it? LOL
What does the refusal to respect an unwritten rule - which has been obeyed by ALL recent candidates - tell us about Trump's "policy and leadership"?
Okay, so why should they give out their personal information, which is included in their tax returns? Why should they open themselves to identity theft? 40 years ago it was much harder for someone to steal an identity, because of the lack of technological assistance. Now, they are busting stolen ID, credit card, Social Security number, etc. exchange sites every day. Heck, the easiest thing for a hacker/id thief is for someone to give them the information (social engineering as what happened with John Podesta from what I understand). By releasing tax return information, you are making it much easier for these people.
An unwritten rule that is essentially financial suicide in today's world of the Dark Web and PII exchanges where identity theft and stolen credit card information is common. Anyone wanting to see tax returns of any candidate is essentially telling them to make it easy to have someone take their hard work and turn it into a windfall for someone else who just decided to steal their identity.
It tells us he doesn't make important decisions just because "it's the way things have always been done" or "someone else did it that way." He's his own man. That makes me him more of a leader than the other type of person. That other type is known as a "follower."
If that's what you see, then there's no point in discussion.
Obama wanted to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." That sounds like a pretty solid rejection of traditions, including, I would guess, a lot of "unwritten rules." You didn't consider that leadership?
So...in summary....
Leftist blog Vox is unhappy because three Republican senators are not behaving like Democrats.
And you don't think their expectations are ridiculously unrealistic.
Sasse and Flake are both in the prime "run for national office" age range and hold ambitions beyond their current positions. I'm not sure what Corker's problem is, but it probably involves money.
I don't cut the Democrats any slack though, nor the nation's national media. The media, the Republicans, and the Democrats should all be calling for Trump's resignation.
So, the next election, we can count on rightwingers to never demand that the Dem candidate reveal his/her tax returns, right?
[HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAH---of course we can't count on that. They will, of course, be screaming for them]
I don't recall anyone calling for Obama's tax returns from the Republican Party. However, we did demand to see his thesis from college, which is not PII.
No Republican no matter how anti Trump is going to mess around with a SCOTUS nominee. Most of the things the Dems are asking for (like a guarantee not to fire Mueller) are just products of liberal fantasies and actually contrary to what Dems really want. They would absolutely love it if Trump fired Mueller.
Sasse, Flake and Corker may not be pro Trump but they do know why they became Republicans. Kavanaugh is a completely 100% mainstream choice for any Republican.