by Thaddeus G. McCotter
Politics is no game of chess but a loaded dice match where Trump, like a sly quarterback, warns GOP stumble bums to play ball—or face the bench.
The recent Detroit Lions’ victory over the Chicago Bears featured a trick play called “stumble bum.” The Lions’ quarterback pretended to trip, the running back took a few steps and fell, and the offensive linemen yelled, “Fumble.” That was all it took to bait the hook. Believing a potential turnover was afoot, the Bears’ defense froze for a moment, hunting for the loose ball. Too late did the Bears’ defense see the Lions’ running back stand up and make a block and the quarterback straightening and throwing the football to the Lions’ tight end, who had “missed” his block and was releasing toward the end zone. Touchdown, and victory, Detroit Lions.
In football, trickery is not unique, but it is not the rule. In politics, trickery is not unique, and it is the rule. This leads some conspiratorial minds to conclude the recent congressional tussle over the Continuing Resolution (CR) was an elaborate ruse to embarrass the departing President Biden and his Democrat-majority Senate by saddling them with a defeat and handing President-elect Trump and the House GOP a win.
But politics is not four-dimensional chess, nor even four-dimensional checkers. Politics is a back-alley game of craps rolled with loaded dice by stumble bums for other people’s bread. The CR’s congressional stumble bums were all too real. Fortunately, President Trump’s victory was equally real, as will be its benefits for his legislative agenda.
In ordinary times, one might wonder why the once and future president, Donald Trump, would precipitately cannonball back into the swamp during the increasingly routine Congressional food fight over a continuing resolution (CR), even calling for extending or eliminating altogether the debt ceiling.
As a matter of entertainment, this increasingly routine production of this tawdry political theater—CR vs. Shutdown: This Time It’s Personal—has grown as stale as month-old cornbread: “The government may or may not shut down,” the regime media hyperventilates; the public shrugs; and the crisis limps to a less than thrilling denouement, where a dangling narrative thread has been twisted into the shape of a noose upon which to hang yet another limp sequel. Such is hardly the somnambulant “entertainment” that the media-savvy Mr. Trump would ordinarily attach to his person or his brand.
As a matter of politics, on its surface, the CR fight had appeared to be the expiring administration and Congress’ flaming bag of feces dropped upon the threshold of his second term upon which Mr. Trump had best not stomp to extinguish. If the departing lame ducks could not resolve this budgetary impasse, the ensuing government shutdown would sully their legacy, not Mr. Trump’s. Even in the highly improbable prospect that a government shutdown would have persisted until the new Congress and Mr. Trump were sworn into office, the new president would have been armed with a GOP-led House and Senate to solve the impasse and end the shutdown.
Ultimately, however, lame ducks of a feather flocked together and resolved the CR crisis. Incoming President Trump played as constructive a role as possible by urging the outgoing GOP gaggle onward with his various and inimitable exhortations, admonitions, and threats, which helped significantly reduce the size and scope of the CR, though the debt ceiling remained a narrative thread for yet another sequel [sigh].
The big variable is whether Mr. Trump has furthered his overriding objective. It is not the passage of a “clean” CR with the extension or the elimination of the debt ceiling. Such was Mr. Trump’s short-term goal.
By engaging in lame duck hunting during the CR fight, incoming President Trump was playing the long game for his pending legislative goals. Upon resuming the presidency, he must pass his ambitious agenda through slim GOP congressional majorities in the House and Senate in a short period of time. As with so much in his political career, if Mr. Trump succeeds, it will constitute an unprecedented accomplishment.
Prior to the 2024 election, the only individual to be elected to non-consecutive presidential terms had been Grover Cleveland. In his time, Mr. Cleveland had a distinct, though not overwhelming, advantage over Mr. Trump. Though due to the American Cincinnatus, George Washington, there existed political precedence against it, Mr. Cleveland had the legal right to seek reelection to a third term. This provided him with leverage over his fellow Democrats in Congress to toe his personally defined party line and advance his agenda.
On his part, however, the 22nd Amendment constitutionally bars Mr. Trump from serving a third term. The amendment was heavily supported by Republicans who sought to prevent “another President Franklin Roosevelt” from garnering more than two terms of office. The 22nd Amendment reduces Mr. Trump’s leverage by barring him from seeking a third term and, ergo, placing a January 2029 expiration date on any threats he may make of using presidential powers to cajole and coerce members of Congress to support his agenda. Ironically, then, just as FDR did, Mr. Trump has signaled he will wield a singularly political cudgel to impose and exert his will over GOP members of Congress: supporting their prospective primary opponents.
In many ways, this is a more formidable threat, for it strikes at the very heart of what matters most to most duly elected Congressional servants—keeping their seat at all costs. Not getting a “log rolled” new road for the district in exchange for a vote or two can be dissembled away for a term or two as representatives wait out an antagonistic president. What cannot be so easily brushed off is a primary challenge from a credible opponent that is supported by an antagonistic president—especially an antagonistic president as popular within his party as Mr. Trump is.
This is why Mr. Trump singled out Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) for special disapprobation. It was sending a message that, if you cross the incoming president, not only will your legislative goals be blocked, you could very well get booted out of office by losing a primary. Indeed, it is why Mr. Trump helpfully provided the former Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) precedent to the current Rep. Roy.
(As an aside, presidential leverage over internal caucus elections is limited for a host of reasons. The first is that they are, by constitutional design, a separate, equal branch of government, but the threat of supporting primaries against members of your own party does significantly curtail the House and Senate leadership’s ability to oppose the president’s agenda.)
History does provide a caution to Mr. Trump and future presidents about engaging in primaries against their congressional opponents. As Mr. John E. Moser records about FDR’s internecine attempts to unseat Congressional Democrats who opposed his New Deal:
The plan backfired. Critics, deliberately using a term associated with Stalin’s Soviet Union, suggested that Roosevelt was trying to “purge” his party of dissenters, and he was accused of attempting to establish a dictatorship. In the end, all but one of the incumbents whom the president had campaigned against managed to hold on to their seats—and, unsurprisingly, they were more than determined to resist Roosevelt’s agenda. In addition, the 1938 elections produced major gains for the Republican Party; while they had nowhere close to a majority in either house, Republicans were strong enough that they could, in combination with conservative Democrats, block any major new White House initiative. Meanwhile the president was increasingly focused on events beyond America’s shores, as a new world war seemed likely. The New Deal had come to an end.
Oops.
Nonetheless, by engaging in the CR tussle, Mr. Trump issued a clarion call that he understands the political constraints facing an incoming, immediately lame-duck president and that he will do everything he can to overcome these obstacles. Mr. Trump understands the clock began running on his second term the moment he won it. He wants the Republican stumble bums in Congress to know he knows it.
Or else.
***
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003-2012 and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
Thaddeus G. McCotter
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/28/lame-duck-hunting-mr-trump-plays-the-long-game/
No comments:
Post a Comment