While reading through the latest in the shutdown related news stories and how bipartisan senate talks were going nowhere, it occurred to me: Mitch McConnell isn’t protecting the president, he’s boxing him in and starting the process of wresting control of the GOP back from Trump. My thinking runs as follows:
At this point, the polls have made it pretty clear that the public blames Trump and the GOP for the shutdown, so there is zero pressure on the Democrats to cut any sort of deal, especially when they can send clean spending bills over to the Senate on a daily basis if they so choose. Besides, siding with Trump is a death sentence in the primaries next year. The democratic caucus will hold firm.
This leaves Trump with two possible outs: declare a national emergency, or the one nobody is talking about which is have a veto of a spending bill overridden. An emergency declaration is unpopular with the general populace and could easily be spun as a Democrat win, since they would’ve held firm and the declaration would face, at best, an uncertain legal fate. They’ve clearly back off of this idea in the last week, and it’s pretty obvious they don’t like the way it is being perceived by his base.
This leaves the third option, Congress overrides him. This would be the better of the two options, as Trump would get to claim he stood firm, but he was betrayed by the people who were supposed to support him. Getting to play the victim is his favorite past time, and would probably help shift some more of the blame to the Congressional GOP. Mitch knows this, and thus, he’s decided to head this one off at the pass. His language is very specific in insisting he won’t pass a bill the president won’t sign, and I think he’s making it clear that the Senate GOP won’t be coming to his rescue to take a bullet for him. At least without him asking, that is.
What I think McConnell is playing for here is Trump either asking for help, or even openly hinting he wants the veto override. Either one of these would be damaging to Trump in the eyes of his base, and would possibly begin the process of weakening his cult-like following among the GOP base.