August couldn’t come too soon for the Republican Congress. Not because they’re exhausted from overwork, but because they had to get away from their president and each other. Seven months into this, and the Republican civil war is only heating up. Over at NBC’s First Read, they count the ways.
- Three Senate Republicans voted to effectively stop (at least for now) the GOP efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare;
- Another GOP senator, Jeff Flake of Arizona, has a new book that criticizes President Trump and his party (“I am concerned at the direction the party is going — protectionism in particular, kind of an anti-immigrant fervor,” Flake said on “Meet the Press” yesterday);
- Congressional Republicans disagree on whether the debt ceiling should be raised with or without accompanying spending cuts;
- Republicans overwhelmingly voted for a Russia sanctions package, forcing President Trump to sign it over his own objections;
- GOP senators sided with Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the president attacked Sessions as “beleaguered”;
- And prominent Republicans are already jockeying for 2020, sensing a weakened Trump, the New York Times wrote over the weekend (“They see weakness in this president,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said).
And at TPM, there’s a list of the five ways the Republican Congress has “Trump-proofed” the government. They’re not adjourning for the next month that they’re out on recess, instead keeping pro forma sessions going to prevent him from doing something like firing Jeff Sessions and recess appointing a replacement who might be willing to fire Robert Mueller for him. Speaking of which, we’ve also seen a bipartisan effort to write legislation explicitly protecting Mueller from Trump firing him. They slapped Trump down on Russia sanctions, with both chambers of Congress passing the sanctions with veto-proof majorities. The Senate seems to be moving ahead with a bipartisan effort to stop at least one of his Obamacare sabotage efforts, and they have roundly rejected his budget.
I have a feeling there aren’t going to be any more big Rose Garden celebrations for these guys.