Campaign Action
It may have taken an entire year of their lives, but by golly it may be beginning to dawn on even Republican lawmakers are realizing that when a sitting president is 1.) known for openly and brazenly lying about even the most pointless things and 2.) cannot grasp more than a few bare phrases of his own supposed policy priorities and 3.) commonly and repeatedly contradicts those would-be policy statements in new statements days or hours or minutes later and 4.) may, in fact, be a latex puppet controlled by three cocaine-addicted housecats, he may not be a good negotiating partner when it comes to actually, you know, governing things.
It demonstrates once again to Democrats — and Republicans — that Trump is an unpredictable, unreliable partner who cannot be trusted to keep his word. To lawmakers on Capitol Hill, there may be no greater crime, since all members and senators know their word is their bond. Once you lose that credibility, you’re done as a deal-maker.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. Mitch McConnell has made a nice career for himself in demanding the Senate do one thing under Democratic control and another thing when under Republican control, so let's not go nuts on the theory that our current crop of lawmakers can be trusted to either keep their word or not run off with your silverware. But yeah, it turns out that Trump's uniform policy ignorance coupled with his failure to remember what the hell he was talking about a day earlier is a problem.
This has come to a head in the DACA "negotiations," in which Trump both apparently agreed with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein about wanting a clean bill and the panicked Republican compatriots who reminded him that no he does not, with Trump both wanting a "bill of love" and for America to stop accepting so many people from "Haiti" and "Africa." So now even Republicans who have been kissing Trump's ass like they were finalists in a county fair ass-kissing contest are grousing that things aren't going to get anywhere until someone can convince Trump to have an actual policy stance:
“You can’t fix this problem without the president,” [Sen. Lindsey Graham] said in an interview. “I think he does [want a deal]. … He’s poorly served by his staff. I think that the guy [last] Tuesday was contrary 180 degrees different from the guy I saw Thursday. I think it’s staff.”
Translation: Sen. Graham has not forgotten that Russian hackers still have a trove of his emails, and so rather than insult Trump he will reluctantly attempt to sell us on the notion that if Trump's staff weren't so incompetent they could maybe convince him to have the same policy two days in a row. Anti-immigrant (Kelly) and white nationalist (Miller) members of the White House have been attempting it, but not in a way Lindsey Graham likes and not even Kelly has been able to drill Trump’s supposed “new” stances into him in a fashion that Republican lawmakers can assume to be permanent.
But however the alarm is phrased, Trump's inability to articulate any policy not premised around his own supposed genius is at this point becoming a hindrance to Republican House and Senate policy-making, since they have no idea which of their ideas Trump will approve or condemn or whether he will change his mind and attack them for proposing things he originally liked the moment he sees an unflattering punditry segment on his television. And because Mitch McConnell remains, above all else, a coward, he's apparently now decided that the Senate will simply stop governing until they do get Trump's approval.
“There’s going to have to be a specific plan that the president approves of before Sen. McConnell puts it on the floor,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is involved in the “Twos Group” of deputy leaders to try to find an immigration compromise.
There is therefore now a nontrivial chance that the government not only will shut down, but will remain shut down until someone can extract a single clear, consistent, and vote-ready policy stance from Donald J. Garbage Fire—something nobody, during the past year, has been able to do.