All the Republicans now have #TrumpRegrets, but for some there's a silver lining in the big black cloud hanging over popular vote loser Donald Trump. As long as he's enmeshed in the Russia mess, the House Republican leadership's extreme legislative agenda is imperiled, and that's saving some folks from having to take very difficult votes.
With nearly daily revelations in the investigations into Russia's interference into last year's presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign, the president is beginning to lose clout on Capitol Hill. […]
House Speaker Paul Ryan read off a to-do list for the House last week, which includes work on "closing the skill gap, on streamlining I.T. to get waste out of government, make the Pentagon more efficient, get tax reform moving."
"These are things that really affect people in their daily lives. We're working on this," he told reporters. "So I just think it's very important that people know that we can walk and chew gum at the same gum."
But holding hearings and writing legislation isn't the same as marshaling the political capital to undertake difficult votes. For that, it's vital to have a strong president to keep the party unified and bring along reluctant colleagues. A president unpopular with the public or with diminished credibility is unlikely to deliver necessary votes from a Republican lawmaker facing a difficult re-election.
In fact, splitting with an unpopular president could be politically beneficial for some. And Democrats are quick to exploit those dynamics.
He's not just an unpopular president, he's a dangerous and destructive one. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to go into the Trump regime with the view that he was going to be their useful tool to get their extremist agenda signed into law. They probably weren't far off the mark, but they didn't account for the fact that he's a walking, talking train wreck of corruption. Or maybe they figured he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and act appropriately while being their puppet. They clearly didn't know Trump.
They also didn't account for the fact that their agenda is vastly unpopular and Trump was the perfect catalyst for activating the resistance. All of which puts their legislative agenda into peril as much as Trump's "drama" does. The country is not going to get out of this mess unscathed, even if only a portion of what they want to do is accomplished, because what they want to do will harm millions. As more and more rank-and-file Republicans realize that, the happier they’ll be to use the excuse of Trump’s troubles to avoid taking those tough votes.