Let’s compare what President Trump has accomplished since the
inauguration (with that enormous crowd!) with what congressional Republicans
have done.
In the past three weeks, Trump has: staffed the White House, sent
a dozen Cabinet nominees to the Senate, browbeat Boeing into cutting its price
on a government contract, harangued American CEOs into keeping their plants in
the United States, imposed a terrorist travel ban, met with foreign leaders and
nominated a Supreme Court justice, among many other things.
(And still our hero finds time to torment the media with his
tweets.)
More than 90 percent of congressional Republicans kept their jobs
after the 2016 election, so you can cross “staffing an entire branch of
government” off the list. Only the Senate confirms nominees, which they’ve been
doing at a snail’s pace, so they’ve got loads of free time — and the House has
no excuse at all.
Where’s the Obamacare repeal? Where are the hearings featuring
middle-class Americans with no health insurance because it was made illegal by
Obamacare?
The House passed six Obamacare repeals when Obama was president
and there was no chance of them being signed into law. Back then, Republicans
were full of vim and vigor! But the moment Trump became president, the repeals
came to a screeching halt.
After the inauguration (gigantic!), House Speaker Paul Ryan and
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put out a plan for repealing Obamacare …
in 200 days. They actually gave their legislative agenda this inspiring title:
“The Two Hundred Day Plan.”
TWO HUNDRED DAYS!
What was in the last six Obamacare repeals? If we looked, would we
find “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” carefully typed out 1 million
times? Seriously, what does Paul Ryan’s day look like?
This is the Silence of the Lambs Congress. They’re utterly silent,
emerging from the House gym or their three-hour lunches only to scream to the
press about Trump.
To the delight of the media, these frightened little lambs are
appalled by nearly everything Trump does. They’ve been especially throaty about
Trump’s temporary travel ban from seven terrorist nations — as designated by
the Obama administration (and by everybody else who hasn’t been in a deep
freeze in a Finnish crevasse for the past decade).
Just like the six Obamacare repeals, a refugee ban was already
written and passed by one house of Congress. Then suddenly: the Silence of the
Lambs. McConnell and Ryan are hiding under their desks, as Trump is being
attacked from every side.
Way, way
back, 15 long months ago, congressional Republicans didn’t have a problem with
a total ban on Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Not
for a mere three months like Trump’s order — but permanently, unless the
director of the FBI, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and
the director of national intelligence personally certified that a particular
refugee posed no danger to the U.S.
That bill passed the House with an overwhelming, veto-proof
majority, including 47 Democrats. Then it went to the Senate to die.
But when President Trump imposed a comparatively mild three-month
ban on immigrants from Syria, Iraq and five other terrorist nations, the same
Republicans who had voted for a limitless ban on refugees whiled away their
days calling reporters to denounce Trump.
A little more than a year ago, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas,
bragged in a press release that he had introduced the House’s refugee ban,
calling it a bill that would “protect Americans from ISIS.”
But when it came to Trump’s three-month pause, McCaul told the
Post that Trump’s order “went too far.”
I guess that ISIS problem just sort of faded away. (Or maybe we
should check with Mrs. McCaul, inasmuch as it’s her family money that makes
Rep. McCaul one of the richest members of Congress.)
Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., who voted for the House’s permanent
refugee ban, demanded that Trump immediately rescind his travel ban, babbling
on about the “many, many nuances of immigration policy” — which he must have
learned about on one of his congressional jaunts to a Las Vegas casino.
Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., said that Trump’s order “overreaches
and undermines our constitutional system.” Evidently, he was suddenly struck by
the realization that it’s “not lawful to ban immigrants on the basis of
nationality,” despite having voted to ban refugees on the basis of nationality
just 15 months earlier. (I’m OK with this, provided the Syrians, Somalis and
Yemenis are sent to live on Justin’s street after being told about his support
for gay marriage.)
Sens. Jeff
Flake, R-Ariz., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., both rushed to The Washington Post with
this refreshingly original point: NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS! Why, thank you, senators! Where
would the GOP be without you?
The Post also quoted spokesmen — spokesmen! — for Republican Sens.
Mike Lee of Utah, Rob Portman of Ohio and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
complaining about not having been briefed on Trump’s order. The senators
themselves were far too busy to talk to the press because they were — wait,
what were they doing again? Words With Friends? Decoupage?
Since the election, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has been mostly
occupied polishing his anti-Trump quotations to get a pat on the head from an
admiring media. He complained about Trump’s order, saying it was “poorly
implemented” and that he had to find out about it from reporters. (I wonder
why.)
This is the moment we’ve been waiting for our entire lives, but
Republicans in Congress refuse to do the people’s will. Their sole, driving
obsession is to see Trump fail.
I am not presently calling for these useless, narcissistic,
Trump-bashing Republicans to be defeated in their re-election bids, but they’re
on my Watch List. To be cleared, they can start by getting off the phone with
The Washington Post and passing one of those six Obamacare repeal bills.
