Alright, Republicans lost the House of Representatives. And the party lost control of the Senate. And, would you believe, Republicans also lost Ohio? And the state of Texas. Texas!
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was your night at the theater?
Several reasons for that. The midterm tradition of adversity for a president's party. And TDS. And objection to Donald Trump doing so much. As my friend Joel Pollak of the California Post tweeted:
Trump was elected to do politically difficult but necessary things. Securing the border is ugly. Fighting Iran is costly. Taking on special interests upsets donors. Backing AI scares people…Republicans paid the costs. The benefits will be with us for many generations.
Now what?
We’ve got seven weeks and one day until the GOP becomes an impotent minority in Congress, and the Democrats, including newly elected socialists and the first Muslim senator, an antisemite no less, take office and commence their reign of revenge.
They want obstructive committee hearings and probes. They want impeachments, open borders, new reliably blue states in D.C. and Puerto Rico. They want to pack the Supreme Court with progressives or worse.
The president says he’s willing to work with them on select issues; he mentioned immigration, which seemed odd. It was Dems who created this infestation of illegals. Somehow, I do not see Donald J. Trump becoming a passive lame duck victim of crazed newly-entitled socialists.
There are 50 calendar days left before the Dem winter offensive launches. The way congressional sloths operate, that might be closer to two, maybe three actual work weeks.
Is there anything Republicans in Congress can do to lock in Trump policies for the final 24 months of this historically unique Trump era?
Well, actually, yes. Yes, there is. Take the Senate, for example. Please.
That’s a cadre of 100 self-important people with a bipartisan inclination to be less than supportive of this rookie politician who won an historic, upset election in 2016 by running as a loudmouth outsider against the capital city where elected members of Congress go to somehow become millionaires on a $174,000 annual salary.
I would call that Swamp sabotage. By the way, here’s the revealing origin of that French word, from “sabot,” the hollowed out wooden shoes worn by poor folk.
The Industrial Revolution of the early 1800s began introducing machinery to manufacturing processes that had relied for centuries on the hands of individual workers.
Thousands of those workers were displaced and displeased. In protest, they reacted by tossing their wooden shoes into the threatening machines, creating chaos.
Today, white-collar workers threatened by AI don’t wear wooden shoes. And to my knowledge, neither do senators.
Any outright opposition to Trump among Republicans invites fierce reaction from the MAGA crowd. So, their response to the Trump threat was passive-aggressive, to silently slow-walk much of what he wants.
Halfway through Trump 2.0 as the window of opportunity begins closing for the approaching two-year political winter, there remain – are you sitting? – 94 Trump ambassadors still awaiting confirmation. And more than 100 other nominees also wallow in limbo awaiting Senate approval to join Team Trump in the administration.
As of Friday, 21 Trump lifetime federal judicial appointments still sit in the Republican Senate awaiting confirmation now, or extinction, come January.
Here’s an idea for GOP senators! Discard your convenient arcane rules. Get off your tailored-suit butts and push these things through right now before the next vacation.
Little-noticed fact: Even during frequent absences from formal work, to go back home or on comfortable taxpayer-financed junkets abroad, Republican Senate leadership has declined to call them recesses. They have instead staged pro forma sessions to pretend they're still in session. That prevents recess appointments by a president, their alleged ally.
As a result of such sabotage, Trump has had access to zero recess appointments, which can last an entire congressional session. They would have given the party’s commander in chief more skilled hands in key positions to drive his conservative agenda.
George W. Bush got 107 recess appointments during his terms. Lacking enthusiastic Senate backing, Trump has had to resort to some 500 Executive Orders.
Oh, look! Those are completely reversible by the next chief executive, which restores the bipartisan establishments’ comfortable established ways.
Trump’s reelection in 2024 handed Republicans in Congress complete control of Capitol Hill. That’s a great honor bestowed by voters and a potential legislative expressway for a united party.
Under the current Senate leadership of South Dakota’s John Thune, the GOP has had 53 seats, plus the vice president’s vote if necessary. In the next session the party may have 44 seats. Shut up and sit down in the back!
Those losses were devastating and came in longtime red places — Texas, Maine, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, both Carolinas.
But not, notably, in Florida. There, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his GOP legislature, working together, have embedded their party by delivering impressive conservative results throughout his two terms.
Check out this partial list of accomplishments for policy teamwork by a Republican chief executive and GOP legislature:
- They have balanced smaller budgets year after year,
- Florida has four million more residents than New York, yet under GOP leadership, its government budget is considerably less than half of New York's,
- Florida also slashed the state’s outstanding debt by 54 percent,
- banned Sharia law,
- prohibited DEI policies by local governments,
- stiffened drug enforcement and criminal penalties,
- reformed property taxes for homeowners,
- and shielded homeowners and small businesses from the electricity and infrastructure costs of massive data centers.
Despite the GOP’s Senate losses, DC senators last week voted on a secret ballot to reelect Thune as their leader. Nothing suggests reelection like losing.
Mollie Hemingway, editor of The Federalist, put it this way about the GOP Senate:
Reelecting the same exact leadership team that had done so little in the previous two years … really showed contempt for the voters.
The denizens of Congress have long memories, no term limits, and patience. They recall that the pillar of Trump’s initial campaign, the historic (and blessed) upset of Bill Clinton’s wife, was denouncing the deaf, unyielding establishments of both parties inhabiting the Swamp.
Always amazes me that back then, the Fifth Avenue billionaire was the lone Republican of 17 candidates to hear, to voice, and then to act on the Heartland’s anger and frustration with Washington.
During the interminable years of Barack Obama’s presidency, I once asked Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) about out-waiting that devious Democrat. He smiled and said, “He’ll be gone before I am.”
Then as Majority Leader, McConnell stifled Obama’s attempted Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland and engineered the historic construction of Trump’s current conservative majority there.
Thune has rigidly resisted the president’s pressure to kill the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to end debate. As Michael Corleone said to his cousin Vincent Mancini in “The Godfather Part III,” “You are what you are. It’s in your nature.”
Dropping the 60-vote requirement would have finally enabled passage of the SAVE America Act, which would, among other things, require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to do so. The House approved it last winter.
Needless to say, the Democrat Party, whose last president facilitated more than 10 million illegal immigrants to enter the country, is counting on the future ballot support of such non-citizens, likely by a vast, blanket amnesty.
The new Democrat-controlled Congress takes office at 12 PM ET on Jan. 3. I estimate about 12:04, the Democrat Senate will kill the filibuster, giving its minute majority free rein to pass favored measures to force Trump’s veto.
In the House, the exiting GOP majority viewed the disappointing midterm results differently. Current Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana relinquished any thought of keeping that position after his party lost more than 40 seats.
Ohio’s Jim Jordan and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise competed for the party’s House leadership. The 62-year-old Jordan won 106-73.
Jordan is a hardline conservative and strong Trump supporter who co-founded the Freedom Caucus. A state and NCAA champion wrestler, Jordan will become Minority Leader in January as he starts his eleventh House term.
He told colleagues:
For too long, we have operated without a clear plan to survive the hour or the day in front of us. That will not cut it against an emboldened and energetic Democratic party.
I am battle-tested on the oversight front and I know the Democrats' playbook.
Jordan was a four-time state wrestling champion in Ohio with a 150-1 record and a two-time NCAA champion for the University of Wisconsin at 134 pounds with a 156-28 record.
Politics and the House of Representatives seem to attract hard-nosed politicians. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and even Abraham Lincoln were veteran amateur wrestlers who served there.
We’ll soon see if any strong Republican fighters have survived in either chamber.
