Here comes trouble
Senate Republicans just got done rubber stamping most of Donald Trump’s unqualified cabinet nominees, which isn’t exactly a big surprise. Today’s Republicans love nothing more than caving to Trump when it comes time to vote on the things he wants. They’re cowards of course.
But even the most complicit of cowards can have a self-interested streak. It’s why I’ve pointed out that if we can keep Trump from becoming a King within his first hundred days, the battle should get a bit easier from there. Presidents always get something of a free pass in their first hundred days – from moderate Americans, from the media, and from their own party – but eventually that window begins to close.
The reasons are obvious enough. After the first hundred days, any moderate American who was giving the new President the benefit of the doubt will have now grown tired of doing so. The media will have grown tired of trying to look judicious, and will go negative for ratings. And members of the President’s own party will start worrying about their own reelection prospects.
It feels like it’s been a lot longer, but we’re only thirty-two days into this Trump regime. We have another sixty-eight days to go before we reach the hundred day mark. That’s seven weeks, and while it’ll continue to be a hellacious time, seven weeks will go by quickly enough if we keep fighting. In the meantime, we’re seeing some subtle signs that Trump’s window of opportunity may indeed close after those hundred days.
Republican Senator John Cornyn just publicly criticized Trump for executive overreach, and said that “We’re going to have to wait until the courts sort this out.” This may not sound like much, and in reality it’s not much. But ask yourself why Cornyn is choosing to say this out loud at this time. Cornyn is not a man with a conscience. He didn’t suddenly have a revelation. This is strategic.
Cornyn is trying to (at least verbally) distance himself from Trump’s overreach, because he expects that overreach to go poorly for Trump. Cornyn expects the courts will likely keep ruling against Trump, and that Trump will end up looking very bad and being very unpopular by the time it’s all over. Once we reach that point, Cornyn wants to be able to point back to his own prior words and say “See, I was never on board with Trump’s overreach.”
Cornyn deserves zero credit for this. And if the courts do end up reversing course and siding with Trump, Cornyn will suddenly be on board with Trump’s overreach. But we’re already seeing Cornyn hedging his bets against Trump. Cornyn has to get reelected next year, and he thinks that by then, Trump may be so unpopular (even in Texas) that he’ll have better odds of reelection by standing against Trump.
In other words, just thirty-two days in, we’re already seeing some Republicans strategically positioning themselves for the possibility, even the likelihood, that they’re going to end up having to stand against an unpopular Trump in order to keep themselves in power. Again, we’re not at the hundred day mark, so this is all still preliminary. But Cornyn’s response is an interesting temperature check to say the least.
