The Republican Senate is rattled
Despite the way it might appear from a distance, the Republican Senate has quietly said “no” to Donald Trump at least a few times since he’s taken office. Most of his nominees are terrible, but some of them are so cartoonishly terrible, GOP Senators who have to vote on these confirmations don’t want to get stuck with the blame for the disaster – so they subtly signal to Trump that he needs to withdraw the nomination.
The thing is, this only tends to happen on occasion. And even then, the GOP Senate ends up giving Donald Trump something close to what he wanted, in order to allow him to save face, and to keep him happy. This time around, however, things are rather different. From the minute Trump nominated GOP Congressman John Ratcliffe to be his Director of National Intelligence, Republican Senators began publicly trying to steer Trump toward withdrawing the nomination.
Sure enough, that ended up happening this evening, even as Trump publicly blamed the media for having to withdraw Ratcliffe, instead of accurately blaming the Republican Senate. What’s fascinating is that the Republicans aren’t just keeping Trump from getting his guy. They’ve also preemptively announced that he’s not even allowed to pick his own Acting Director of National Intelligence in the meantime.
GOP Senators like Richard Burr are publicly steering Trump toward having to keep Sue Gordon, who appears to be loyal to the ousted Dan Coats, in the position on an acting basis. What a kick in the teeth, considering that Trump was specifically trying to get Coats’ influence out of his administration. Trump seems to understand that the Republicans are calling the shots on this one, as he’s now publicly talking about how much he likes Gordon, just days after he insisted that he was going to hand pick someone else to be the Acting DNI.
So what’s going on here? It’s not that Republican Senators have suddenly grown a conscience. These are the same folks who allowed Donald Trump to put Brett Kavanaugh the Supreme Court, and who allowed Trump to put Alexander Acosta in his cabinet. You get the feeling that a year ago or even six months ago, the GOP would have let Trump have Ratcliffe. But now, perhaps due to the brewing impeachment saga, Senate Republicans are acting like they fear Trump is going to end up having his day of reckoning – and they want to have the cover of being able to point to the DNI debacle as an instance of them trying to protect America from Trump’s inept corruptness. Whatever is going on, the Republican Senate is clearly rattled.
