Tiny Steps

Almost real? We'll see. Maybe.

I was going to write cranky today, but, well, you’re getting something resembling optimistic instead. Just to be clear from the start: Not only is there a lot to be cranky about (I was going to write about the Jackie Robinson thing), but there’s plenty that’s cause for despair or fright. Or both. And that’s just from what happened on Wednesday.

Things aren’t good out there, folks.

But instead I’m going to write about a possible small trend towards normal US politics involving the GOP in Congress.

First, however: The most important thing that congressional Republicans have done in the last two weeks was passing the rest-of-the-year funding bill without any constraints on Donald Trump’s anti-Constitution crime spree. For all the attention paid to the Senate Democrats who put the bill over the line, the truth is that the ones who had leverage against Trump’s attack on democracy and the rule of law were the Republicans, and they didn’t even hint at doing so.

Nevertheless…

We now have something resembling three recent instances of congressional Republicans pushing back against Trump:

• Senate Republicans finally found an executive branch nominee they couldn’t stomach, with Dave Weldon dropping out last week just before his confirmation hearing for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Greg Sargent reports that two of the least conservative House Republicans, Nebraska’s Don Bacon and Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, signed on to a bipartisan letter about disappearing information about Russia kidnappings of Ukrainian children.

• The chairs of the House and Senate committees on the military, Alabama’s Mike Rogers and Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, are publicly fighting back against rumored major changes to the US military structure, including pulling back from NATO.

Does it all add up to something? Certainly not very much, for now.

Then again, in the first case Republicans actually accomplished something, spiking a nomination; in the latter two cases we have Republicans putting their names onto something public and risking the consequences. So it’s not absolutely nothing.¹

It’s surely no coincidence that this comes after Trump’s very brief period of relative popularity has passed. His net approval has turned negative and is falling, according to Nate Silver’s estimated polling average; G. Elliot Morris reports that Trump is about 20 percentage points of net approval behind the previous worst-ever on this score through two months (Joe Biden) of any polling-era president other than Trump himself in his first term.² It’s not just the numbers. Republicans can’t hold town hall meetings even in heavily GOP districts without being met by angry constituents, and there are actually far more protests being held this year than there were in 2017, albeit so far without any truly huge events.

Remember too that Republicans were likely to buy into exaggerated stories of Trump’s popularity. It’s natural for the president’s party to read the polls…generously.

For similar reasons, Republicans in Congress — and I’m talking here about the ones who really do support the republic, and therefore might conceivably fight for it — are likely to be among the slowest to accept that Trump is behaving as a full-on autocrat and recognize the full threat he poses. Not only is he on their “team”, but in many ways he’s helping them achieve legitimate policy goals they make care quite a bit about. Or at least he might seem to be doing that.

Trump’s popularity may continue to wane as he pushes unpopular policy ideas, as the fallout from what’s already happening starts hitting voters personally, and especially if the economy really does take a serious hit.

And honeymoon is a real thing. People, including politicians, really do tend to defer to anyone just elected president. Especially same-party politicians. It just seems “democratic” to them.³ That, too, is already wearing off.

In other words, what seems like blind loyalty to a brand new (sort of) and relatively popular (again, sort of) president may not predict blind loyalty no matter what.⁴

The key to all of this is that it wouldn’t take much to matter. A handful of Republicans in both chambers have plenty of leverage, given how small the GOP majorities are. Perhaps they’ll never use it. But we can’t know that now. They can’t know that now. Politics doesn’t work like that.

Granted: There’s no backsies on the cabinet choices already confirmed, and Republicans who have decided to go along for now with Trump’s attack on the Constitution may find that they have less leverage down the road to do anything about it.

But one of the themes I’ve hit on here is that democracy vs. tyranny isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Trump and his allies have already damaged the Constitution and the rule of law, and they continue to do so. But if the proper question is “how much?” then every bit of normal politics kicking in and constraining the president can matter. So along with all the things to despair and fear and just be annoyed by, I’ll also keep looking for signs of resistance. Even in the unlikeliest of places. Even when I’m not quite sure it’s real.

1. It’s not the only example of pushback since Trump took office — there was real resistance reported on tariffs, for example — but there hasn’t been a lot quite like this, with names attached. Also: I realize that writing a little doesn’t seem like much, but in fact that’s how a lot of Congressional oversight works. A letter has to be answered or ignored; if ignored, it’s apt to get the authors even more upset and might get others in Congress upset at White House or agency arrogance. And answering it means justifying a policy, on paper, when the administration may not want to do that at all. So while it isn’t adding a rider to a spending bill, it’s not quite nothing, either.

2. In my item last week about Trump’s polling, I somehow omitted that Silver now has a perfectly good polling average at his site. Also Morris, who took over 538 after Silver, has been keeping the 538 series going, and also is writing at his own substack.

3. Is it actually democratic to treat presidents as if they had a mandate? No, not really. But nevertheless, it happens, with the president and others contesting exactly what the voters actually were “saying” despite the truth that all the voters were saying is that they preferred one candidate to the other(s).

4. Even if Trump’s popularity drops below his first-term lows he’s still going to have at least perceived clout in GOP primaries until someone demonstrates otherwise, so there’s that too.