We begin today’s roundup with Paul Waldman at The Week and his thoughts on the GOP’s civil war:
Parties don't descend into vicious civil wars when things are going well for them. So the fact that it's happening now to the GOP tells you a lot about what Republicans are facing, even though they control the White House, Congress, and a majority of state houses and governorships. They are beginning to tear themselves apart over the question of who is to blame for their current difficulties, with one side saying it's the fault of a feckless establishment that is insufficiently loyal to President Trump, and the other side saying — mostly sotto voce, but occasionally out loud — that the responsibility lies with Trump himself.
Chris Riotta at Newsweek dives into Trump’s deflection of blame at his press conference yesterday:
As the president was about to host a joint press conference with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday afternoon, he suddenly declared himself free of all blame regarding a number of critical legislative issues, from the failure to overturn Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) to the fact his fledgling tax reform plan could lack the support it needs to pass through Congress.
David Graham at The Atlantic, meanwhile, explains how Trump loves to dodge criticism by blaming Obama:
This is classic Trump rhetoric. Any time he is challenged on any action, he promptly compares his own record to past presidents. He doesn’t require that the comparison be true. Having claimed that Obama didn’t call families of slain soldiers, Trump promptly backed down—he didn’t argue that Alexander was wrong, he just changed his claim.
John Cassidy at The New Yorker writes about nine months of “stress testing” American democracy:
If we consider Trump’s Presidency a stress test for American democracy, the system has responded pretty well, hemming him in, challenging him, and frustrating some of his more illiberal designs. But there are worrying signs, too. Every day Trump remains in office, he further polarizes the country and diminishes its international standing. And, as he contemplates the looming reality of being written off as a Presidential failure, there is no knowing where his demons will lead him. [.]
Despite his promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump has delivered practically nothing except chaos, bombast, and division. As long as he occupies the Presidency, an office for which he is blatantly unsuited, he will continue to chip away at the country’s foundations. Right now, only his Cabinet colleagues and the Republicans on Capitol Hill have the power to bring this great ordeal to an end. There is little sign of them summoning the necessary will and courage to act.
E.A. Crunden at Think Progress calls on the president to speak up more and do more on the deadly California wildfires:
California’s crisis is undeniably dire. But that urgency hasn’t been reflected at a federal level. Residents in Florida and Texas received some attention from Trump following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma last month and the president toured affected areas offering his sympathies. Californians want the same treatment — something they’ve yet to see. Typically active on Twitter, the president has been relatively quiet about the fires apart from brief acknowledgements made in person and outside the internet.
Senator John McCain calls for America to lead again, not shrink from upholding our values on the international stage:
To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.
We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.
And, on a final note, here is Dana Milbank’s take on Trump’s cabinet:
And I’m very proud of Trump for recognizing the greatness of his Cabinet. But he is being modest. This isn’t just “one of the finest” Cabinets. There has never been a Cabinet like this before — and there probably will ever be one like it in the furniture.
Sure, George Washington sat around the Cabinet table with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox and Edmund Randolph. Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War with William Seward, Salmon Chase and Edwin Stanton. Franklin Roosevelt beat the Depression and the Nazis with Henry Morgenthau, Harold Ickes and Henry Stimson.
But Washington didn’t have a professional-wrestling executive in his Cabinet, nor an education secretary foresighted enough to warn the country about the danger posed to schools by bears. He didn’t even have an education secretary!