Former GOP Speaker Paul Ryan appropriately rounded out his disgraceful tenure by laying an egg on the way out the door. Between the three Republican men who have been running the federal government for the past two years, neither Ryan nor Mitch McConnell nor Donald Trump demonstrated enough leadership to keep the government's lights on—the bare minimum of governing responsibilities.
So now it's up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats, who found themselves inaugurated into a government this week that isn't even open for business.
In some ways, it's a seemingly impossible task. If the Republicans couldn't even agree among themselves, how can one Democratic-led chamber of Congress possibly remedy the GOP’s record of failure?
"Leader" McConnell rang in the new Congress by ducking any and all responsibility for the shutdown he helped usher into the New Year. After House Democrats passed a package of bills to reopen the government that Senate Republicans had previously supported in the 115th Congress, McConnell promptly announced he wouldn’t even consider the funding measures now unless Trump signaled his support them. As for persuading Trump into reasonability, McConnell’s made clear that’s Democrats’ job. In fact, after a Friday showdown at the White House with Senate and House leadership on both sides of the aisle, McConnell ran for the hills before Trump gave a downright bananas press conference. In effect, McConnell’s posture is: Sorry, Nancy, but I got nothing here—good luck!
But then McConnell hasn't really been in the business of legislating since the GOP triumvirate began their turn at the kiddy wheel in 2017. He made one exception for the Republicans' tax giveaway to the rich, but other than that, he's routinely reduced the Senate's Article 1 powers down to, "We're in the personnel business." It’s a phrase he cheerily rolled out on the regular in 2018. In other words, legislating is hard. But passing judges through the Senate by majority vote is easy. We'll stick to the easy tasks because anything else might require actual skill and leadership to make good on our constitutional obligations.
Yet just two working days in, Pelosi is already bringing the heat to McConnell's conference. Two GOP Senators—Colorado's Cory Gardner and Maine's Susan Collins—found they simply couldn't sell McConnell's lazy pass-the-buck routine as they eye asking voters to reelect them in 2020.
“I think we should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open. The Senate has done it last Congress, we should do it again today,” Gardner said, breaking with McConnell. And when GOP senators start sweating it, McConnell might actually blink—he can't afford to hang any of his members out to dry when he's hoping to maintain, if not expand, his 53-seat majority in 2020.
One of the biggest challenges neither Trump nor McConnell has faced in the Trump era is that they're not the only ones generating headlines anymore. On Thursday, Trump tried to rain on Pelosi's gavel parade by trotting border patrol agents into the White House briefing room for a sad little press stunt that included lots of nativist fear-mongering and zero press questions. But Trump’s gambit didn't even make a dent in Pelosi's headlines.
On Friday, Trump went back to the distraction drawing board with an hour-long harangue of gibberish about the border wall and immigrants. But probably the most enduring headline coming out of the day arose from a nugget Democrats dropped following their leadership meeting at the White House: Trump is perfectly willing to shut down the federal government for "months or even years" over his precious border wall.
Asked about that shutdown threat later at his Rose Garden press conference, Trump bragged, "Absolutely, I said that."
Good for you, Trump.
Takeaway of the week: Democrats care about government. Republicans don't. For two years, Republicans have been mutually covering for each other’s dereliction of duty—content to beat the federal government into the ground, starve it, and keep it from doing an ounce of good for the people who pay for it: American taxpayers. Left entirely to Republican stewardship, the government was simply a function of partisan weaponry, wielded to stack the courts or whip up a political crisis on the border to boost Trump’s standing with his rabid base. At its core, the 115th Congress was a runaway GOP conspiracy of contempt for government that went almost entirely unchecked, except with occasional interference from the courts. But now there’s a new sheriff in town to remind the nation that Congress is actually charged with legislating and making the government work for the American people. Welcome to the 116th, Republicans—Pelosi’s gonna make you work for it.