President-Elect Trump has won another victory before even
taking office. This time, it wasn’t Ford, Carrier, or some other
corporation forced to capitulate in the wake of a tweet; it was the majority of
the House of Representatives. Put simply, Trump has demonstrated the he
is in charge, and the House majority caucus had better get used to following
his lead.
There has been some well justified concern over the
willingness of the GOP establishment (Congressional branch) to work with the
Trump administration. After all, he has been attacking them as denizens
of the swamp that needs to be drained. And he palled around with Hillary
Clinton and was a Democrat until recently. So it is a reasonable
expectation that this outsider would encounter friction with the now entrenched
GOP House majority.
But in the absolutely critical first move – the
interaction that sets a precedent and remains in memory – the GOP House
majority caucus reversed itself and ditched the ethics reform package it
blundered into in the first day of the new Congress. A Trump tweet was
sufficient to generate thousands of outraged calls to members’ offices, an
avalanche so potent that no politician would dare ignore it. In short
order, like burglars caught in a powerful searchlight, they scuttled the plan
and hoped that the whole thing would go away. If you paid no attention to
media yesterday and missed the saturation coverage – as always happens when the
GOP does a face-plant – read this New
York Times coverage, laced with well deserved snark.
I suppose that it is pretty easy to understand how the
majority caucus lost its way. After all, the anonymous accusations
permitted under the current system can be abused. And members of both
parties have been caught in nightmare situations. If they had but waited,
they could have used “ethics reform” as a way of involving Democrats and
thereby defending against hypocritical attacks. They might even have
gotten a better package of reforms. But no...
Perhaps a bit intoxicated with running things under a GOP
president, the caucus removed a burr from under its saddle right away.
They changed the ethics machinery because they needed to adopt new
rules anyway, and they included it in the package – over
the opposition of Paul Ryan, now revealed as not really in charge, no
Tip O’Neill in his command of his majority. This is the opening that
Trump, who knows how to spot and take advantage of weakness (part of what makes
a “great negotiator”), was looking for.
Thus, once again, the nickname “The Stupid Party” has been
proven thoroughly justified.
Democrats no doubt wondered if Christmas had made a
reappearance. Few things pleasure a Democrat more than the opportunity to
hypocritically denounce Republicans, mounted on a high horse of
self-righteousness.
Why couldn’t Republicans see this coming? I don‘t
know. They are supposed to be politicians capable of seeing beyond the
immediate step ahead.
Not
for the first time, a Donald Trump tweet changed things.
Donald Trump is exercising power in ways never before
conceived in American politics. A president-elect has
bent the House majority to his will. That has never happened before, as
far as I know. And no matter how hard they try to forget it, the precedent
has been set, and in Washington, precedent counts for a lot.
In an odd way, the media’s and Democrats’ faux outrage has
strengthened the hand of the man they despise and weakened the hand of his
intra-party rivals, with whom they share many personal and self-interest ties.
Has there ever been a Congress that started with more
self-destructive clumsiness?
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/01/house_gop_capitulation_to_trump_ethics_tweet_is_a_really_big_deal.html#ixzz4UobG5nwI
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