The Republicans Are Off to a Pitiful Start

https://newrepublic.com/article/140520/republicans-off-pitiful-start

The Republicans Are Off to a Pitiful Start
They control the government, but their Faustian bargain with Trump has been a miserable failure thus far.
By Brian Beutler
February 9, 2017

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But they are also getting to cast votes on the worst, most unqualified, and corrupt cabinet in modern history. They are getting to answer for Trump’s broadsides against the judiciary, and to clean up his disastrous ad hoc haranguing of American allies. They are getting to pretend McConnell’s decision to discipline Senator Elizabeth Warren for quoting Coretta Scott King’s criticism of Jeff Sessions—in the middle of black history month—was a stroke of genius. (Corralling nearly every Republican senator to vote for that censure was apparently part of that master plan.) They are getting to make excuses for Trump’s undisguised efforts to enrich himself and his family. And they’re getting to do all this as members of the most important national institution to fully corrupt itself on Trump’s behalf. (Democrats, judges, consumer brands, civil society organizations, and government bureaucrats, have all conducted themselves with enough basic integrity to preserve a glimmer of hope that Trump can’t just shamble Kool-Aid man-style through the entire social fabric.)

It’s possible that a major payoff awaits the GOP. Perhaps they really will repeal and replace Obamacare before the end of the year, even though, according to Senator Bob Corker, “there’s not any real discussion taking place right now.” They seem no closer to a major supply-side tax reform or infrastructure bill or welfare rollback either.

Republicans will presumably fill the Supreme Court’s vacancy in the coming weeks, but that is less a dividend Trump is paying them than one they carried over themselves from the last Congress. And their nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is already condemning Trump in closed door meetings with Democratic senators.

Trump, meanwhile, is about as unpopular now as Bush was in late 2005—before the Democratic Party’s midterm landslide in 2006, but after he had locked in his biggest legislative accomplishments. Republicans made a Faustian bargain with the president, and they’re in the process of getting stiffed. It’s just unclear why they thought Trump would treat them any differently than anyone else he’s partnered with.