Some people ask if there is any sort of dubious behavior that will lead Republicans to vote against confirming Brett Kavenaugh. Others complain about how warped Republicans are to put up with Trump and his corruption, dangerously erratic behavior and attempts to subvert the rule of law, all for the sake of tax cuts, regulatory rollback, and federal judges.
To which I can only answer, you don't understand economic royalists. While the number of true economic royalists in the US is small, they make up basically the entire Republican elite. From an economic royalist perspective, the US has not been free since 1933. Ever since the New Deal was implemented, we have existed under the jackboot of despotism.* Their top priority is therefore rolling back the New Deal.
This has proven problematic. They had high hopes when Ronald Reagan became President in 1980, but he was thwarted by a Democratic Congress. They had high hopes when Newt Gingrich took over Congress in 1994, but he was thwarted by a Democratic President. When Republicans controlled both Congress and the Presidency in 2000, they didn't make any effort whatever and even expanded the abomination by introducing Medicare-D. The last hope for economic royalists was the Tea Party, which denounced Obama deficits, fought Obamacare, and demanded massive spending cuts, even to the point of threatening a debt ceiling breach. But the American people reelected Obama and sided with him over the government shutdown and debt ceiling. And economic royalists were forced to the conclusion that the American people had become hopelessly corrupted, that they would never roll back the New Deal with the elective branches of government, and that their only hope was through the federal courts. The Federalist Society has assembled an essentially unlimited supply of economic royalist judges and the Republican elite has made no secret that they were holding their noses and voting Trump for one reason only -- federal judges in general and the Supreme Court in particular.**
Trump has not disappointed, and the reason is obvious. He neither knows nor cares anything whatever about federal judges. To Donald Trump, judges matter only insofar as they earn him plaudits. The Federalist Society has a ready-made supply of judges for Trump to appoint, and he earns regular plaudits for doing so. He can therefore be counted on to appoint economic royalist judges.
There is also the matter of tax cuts and regulatory rollback. Yes, I know it is ridiculous to applaud tax cuts and be outraged by the deficits that result, but Republicans have been playing this game since Ronald Reagan's day. To an economic royalist, taxes and deficits are unrelated. Cutting taxes doesn't increase deficits, it merely returns money to the people who earned it. The fact that deficits go up just shows that the tax cuts should have been accompanied by spending cuts, but can never call tax cuts into question. Besides, eventually one of two things will happen. Either the tax cuts will precipitate a fiscal crisis and force some future government to cut spending, or else there will finally be enough economic royalist judges to to declare all that spending unconstitutional. Of course, no current office holder wants to still be in office when that happens.
And then, of course, there is regulatory rollback. The Trump administration is declining to enforce regulations, which is good as far as it goes, but has the disadvantage that some Democratic administration might start enforcing them again. Better, from an economic royalist perspective, is wrecking the administrative agencies by corruption and incompetence because that will prevent some future Democratic administration from being able to repair those agencies. But one loophole remains. Private citizens feeling aggrieved under some regulation may sue for enforcement. But that just emphasizes the importance of appointing economic royalist judges who will always rule against the regulation and perhaps someday hold regulatory agencies unconstitutional.
So, yes, to an economic royalist these are the truly important things. That is not to say that they like everything about the Trump Administration. But things that bother journalists may not seem so important to an economic royalist.
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*Some economic royalists may trace our loss of liberty back to the Progressive Era and the first Roosevelt's measures such as the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. A few may even see the rot as setting in with the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887. But most, I think can live with these and see the New Deal and when we lost our freedom.
**Social conservatives also voted Trump in hopes that they would like his Supreme Court appointments, but I am more sympathetic In allowing the New Deal to stand, the Supreme Court is, after all, deferring to the elective branches and the will of the people. In upholding the rights of unpopular religious and political views, they are following a clear constitutional mandate. But in declaring abortion or gay marriage constitutional rights, the Supreme Court is imposing a political program nowhere mentioned in the Constitution that could not be passed by the ordinary political process. I intend to write more on this subject in the future.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Saturday, September 8, 2018
The Awkward Question of What Trump's Staff Should Be Doing
One is problem of unelected staffers and bureaucrats thwarting a duly elected President. To the extent that the bureaucracy upholds the rule of law against Trump's worst impulses, we should certainly applaud it. But most of the thwarting appears to be taking place either within the realm of foreign policy, where the President's discretionary authority is extremely broad, or in foreign trade, where the law has foolishly delegated way more power to the President than it ought. This also means, by the way, that electing a Democratic Congress will not make that much difference. Congress has quite limited power to restrain the President in matters of foreign policy. And although Congress could hypothetically pass legislation to take back its power on trade, any such law would require enough Republican votes to pass over Trump's veto.
The other problem it raises is the whole the anti-Trump paradox. Staffers, bureaucrats, and members of Congress of both parties, as well as political activists, very properly want to avoid the sort of catastrophes portrayed in "But her emails." The best way to keep Trump from breaking free from his minders and causing -- well, maybe we shouldn't think too much about it -- is to remove him in one of the two ways allowed by law -- either by impeachment or by finding him unfit to hold office under the 25th Amendment.
Impeachment requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives and a 2/3 vote in the Senate. The 25th Amendment requires a majority of the Cabinet and 2/3 of both houses of Congress to vote that the President is incapable of carrying out his duties. These are high hurdles to meet, incapacity even higher than impeachment, and rightly so. The will of the people should not be lightly overturned
The only thing that could bring Trump's approval rating into impeachment-grade territory is if he actually harms his loyal followers. Unfortunately, there is no way for him to do that without harming a great many innocent bystanders in the process. This commentator makes something like that point:
[A]re senior officials who steal memos and thwart orders from the president actually doing more harm than good by screening the ‘real’ Trump from the democracy that has to live with its choices, and choose again in two years?Two responses illustrated the dilemma well. One answered: "Yes. Same as enablers of alcoholics who keep them from facing natural consequences until a catastrophe happens." To which another replied, "There's a difference between someone who shields an alcoholic from embarrassment or ridicule, Verses someone with the good sense to hide the keys to the car."
I would agree. You hope that alcoholics facing the consequences of their drinking will finally decide to quit. If the alcoholic causes an accident and is killed, all such hope vanishes. And, worse, yet, the alcoholic is risking not only his or her own life by driving drunk, but the lives of innocent bystanders.
So, what price respecting the will of the people in choosing their duly elected leader? And what price in allowing the leader to show himself for what he is and prove the need to get rid of him? I am not talking now about Congress declining to pass his agenda, bureaucracies in following the law instead of his whims, or courts striking down illegal actions. I am talking about top-ranking staffers illegally thwarting the lawful actions of a duly elected President.
Well, looking at the actions that we now know about:
- Withdrawing from NAFTA, which could spark a diplomatic and economic crisis. I would say let him proceed. An economic crisis, quite unnecessarily created, is just what is needed to get the attention of Trump's followers. I am confident that any economic and diplomatic crisis created would be recoverable. Granted, a lot of innocent Canadians and Mexicans would suffer, but this is the sort of lesser crisis I would be willing to tolerate now to avoid a worse crisis in the future.
- Trade war with China. Let him proceed. We are there already. It is not creating a crisis, but is causing problems. Let them get worse.
- Invading Venezuela. I do not have a clear sense of how this would end up. Would there be Iraqi-style resistance, or merely a godawful mess that was now our responsibility, and with the least competent administration ever in charge? On the one hand, my guess is the damage would be limited by Trump getting bored and soon leaving. On the other hand, I suspect this would be the sort of thing that causes serious damage to the invaded country but not much at home. Is that a good reason to approve or disapprove?
- Cutting off aid to Pakistan. I don't know enough to have an opinion here.
- Withdrawing from the free trade pact with South Korea and/or withdrawing our troops. There was an excellent explanation of why this is a serious threat to national security, and why preventing it was such a high priority.
- Large-scale intervention in Syria. I plan to do a whole post on this.
- Preventive war against North Korea. Yikes! Absolutely, I am in favor of staff intervening with our President to stop this. I don't care about legal nicities here; I just want to avoid nuclear war.
And one final thought. Some might ask, is it worth removing Trump from office if Mike Pence will take his place. I would say, see all the things staffers have kept Trump from doing you will see the answer is hell, yes! I don't like Mike Pence's politics and would expect to oppose almost anything he would want to do as President. But at least there would be no need to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth and lock him up in the closet.
How is Trump's Staff Thwarting Him?
I was going to make further posts on Trump and Russia, but the first leaks from Woodward's book have lead me to a detour
When Donald Trump made his first run for President in 2012, I had no idea he had anything to do with Russia. I did not know his entire business career was based on fraud, although I may have suspected it at some level. I had no idea what his position on any issue was (other than birtherism) and took for granted that he had none. I regarded him a sort of a male Paris Hilton -- a playboy, mostly harmless, but absolutely useless, and an obvious disaster as President.
My reasons for being horrified at the thought of Trump as President had nothing to do with ideology or any particular issue. They were simple. The man was nothing but so much hot air. He knew nothing whatever about any issue and showed no sign of being willing or able to learn. He wouldn't know political or moral principle if it punched him in the nose. He had the attention span and impulse control of a small child. He had no concept of the public good as apart for his own private interests and, if elected, could be expected to regard the federal government as his own private property. He as an obvious authoritarian with no regard for the rule of law. Ross Perot inspired jokes about how shocked he would be when if found out the President could not fire Congress. Trump was so ignorant and so authoritarian that such things would not be jokes. But above all else, he was the sort of person who in case of crisis you would want his staff to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth, and lock him in a closet until it blew over.
And yet here he is as President and nothing catastrophic has happened yet, except in Puerto Rico. The upshot of Woodward's shocking but not surprising book is that the reason is that his staff has restrained him. They have not gone so far as to physically restrain him (yet), but they have regularly stolen papers or engaged in delays or distractions in hopes that he would forget about the original insane project, and flat-out disobedience. Examples included:
Giving credit where it is due, Trump's stopped clock has occasionally been right. Trump is impatient with the never-ending war in Afghanistan. And he recognized that his war of words with North Korea's Kim Jong-un was a man-to-man showdown and would not escalate. But the general impression is that we have avoided disaster because Trump's advisers have overruled their boss.
The New York Times anonymous editorial by an unnamed official described the general atmosphere, but is short on specifics. It says both that "We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous," and also that "[T]he president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic." So the author wants Trump to succeed and thinks that his policies have made America "safer and more prosperous," but that he is nonetheless "detrimental to the health of the republic"? The answer appears to be that the Administration has brought about "effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more," but that Trump's style makes it really difficult to get any of this done. As for specific actions in which the White House staff has thwarted their boss, the author mentions sanctions on Russia and expelling Russian diplomats.
This confirms the general impression in the other articles -- that Trump's staff have been thwarting him primarily in foreign policy and secondarily in foreign trade. If he has been thwarted in domestic policy, it has been by the failure to pass legislation in Congress (such as the repeal of Obamacare). But on the whole staffers are not interfering with Trump's domestic policy -- probably because they agree with it.
When Donald Trump made his first run for President in 2012, I had no idea he had anything to do with Russia. I did not know his entire business career was based on fraud, although I may have suspected it at some level. I had no idea what his position on any issue was (other than birtherism) and took for granted that he had none. I regarded him a sort of a male Paris Hilton -- a playboy, mostly harmless, but absolutely useless, and an obvious disaster as President.
My reasons for being horrified at the thought of Trump as President had nothing to do with ideology or any particular issue. They were simple. The man was nothing but so much hot air. He knew nothing whatever about any issue and showed no sign of being willing or able to learn. He wouldn't know political or moral principle if it punched him in the nose. He had the attention span and impulse control of a small child. He had no concept of the public good as apart for his own private interests and, if elected, could be expected to regard the federal government as his own private property. He as an obvious authoritarian with no regard for the rule of law. Ross Perot inspired jokes about how shocked he would be when if found out the President could not fire Congress. Trump was so ignorant and so authoritarian that such things would not be jokes. But above all else, he was the sort of person who in case of crisis you would want his staff to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth, and lock him in a closet until it blew over.
And yet here he is as President and nothing catastrophic has happened yet, except in Puerto Rico. The upshot of Woodward's shocking but not surprising book is that the reason is that his staff has restrained him. They have not gone so far as to physically restrain him (yet), but they have regularly stolen papers or engaged in delays or distractions in hopes that he would forget about the original insane project, and flat-out disobedience. Examples included:
- Withdrawing from the US-South Korea free trade pact (stolen paper)
- Withdrawing troops from South Korea (discussions)
- Invading Venezuela (numerous cases of talking him down)
- Starting a trade war with China (delays by Gary Cohn, begun now, after Cohn left)
- Cutting off all aid to Pakistan (discrete undermining)
- Large-scale intervention in Syria (a cross between disobedience and talking him down)
- Withdrawal from NAFTA (another stolen paper)
- Preemptive war against North Korea (at least discussed)
Giving credit where it is due, Trump's stopped clock has occasionally been right. Trump is impatient with the never-ending war in Afghanistan. And he recognized that his war of words with North Korea's Kim Jong-un was a man-to-man showdown and would not escalate. But the general impression is that we have avoided disaster because Trump's advisers have overruled their boss.
The New York Times anonymous editorial by an unnamed official described the general atmosphere, but is short on specifics. It says both that "We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous," and also that "[T]he president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic." So the author wants Trump to succeed and thinks that his policies have made America "safer and more prosperous," but that he is nonetheless "detrimental to the health of the republic"? The answer appears to be that the Administration has brought about "effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more," but that Trump's style makes it really difficult to get any of this done. As for specific actions in which the White House staff has thwarted their boss, the author mentions sanctions on Russia and expelling Russian diplomats.
This confirms the general impression in the other articles -- that Trump's staff have been thwarting him primarily in foreign policy and secondarily in foreign trade. If he has been thwarted in domestic policy, it has been by the failure to pass legislation in Congress (such as the repeal of Obamacare). But on the whole staffers are not interfering with Trump's domestic policy -- probably because they agree with it.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Seriously, What Do Republicans Think We Should Have Done?
But pointing out that investigation of a political opponent is a sensitive topic is one thing. Concluding that it should therefore never be done no matter what the evidence is quite another.
And consider the evidence the Intelligence Community was looking at. (Here let us grant (1) a lot of things are public knowledge now that the Intelligence Community did not know at the time and (2) the Intelligence Community knew (and knows) a lot that is still not public knowledge. But let's go by what we know they knew).
They knew the Russians had hacked the DNC server and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager. At a minimum, they knew this because the FBI and two cyber security firms examined the hack and traced it back to Russian intelligence. And to judge from the degree of detail in the Mueller indictment, there may have been other sources as well.
They knew that Wikileaks, an organization at least suspected of ties to Russia, was releasing the hacked material in a manner calculated to cause maximum damage. The Mueller indictment (paragraph 47) identifies the precise e-mail in which the Russians conveyed this information to Wikileaks.
They apparently had a source inside the Kremlin that confirmed that Vladimir Putin was directly behind the hack. (And, I recall but have not found a link, that the purpose was to sway the election for Trump).
They knew Trump was a Putin cheerleader. Trump ran an openly pro-Russia campaign and, despite seemingly having no concept of a mutually beneficial relationship, somehow managed to make an exception for Russia. He regularly quoted talking points from Russian propaganda sources.
They knew the Trump campaign had members with suspicious Russia ties. Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser, had extensive business ties to Russia, strongly pro-Russian views, and had once been targeted for recruitment as a Russian spy. During the campaign he traveled to Moscow and made a pro-Russia public speech. Paul Manafort, who served several months as campaign director, was an adviser and propagandist for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine. Michael Flynn, a major foreign policy adviser who Trump even considered for Vice President, was a semi-regular commentator for Russia Today who did a photo op with Putin.
They knew that Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos drunkenly boasted about being approached by Russian assets who offered him "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of e-mails.
Finally, and most controversially, there are unconfirmed reports that allied intelligence agencies, in the course of routine surveillance of Russian communications, kept picking up suspicious contacts with the Trump team:
They knew that Wikileaks, an organization at least suspected of ties to Russia, was releasing the hacked material in a manner calculated to cause maximum damage. The Mueller indictment (paragraph 47) identifies the precise e-mail in which the Russians conveyed this information to Wikileaks.
They apparently had a source inside the Kremlin that confirmed that Vladimir Putin was directly behind the hack. (And, I recall but have not found a link, that the purpose was to sway the election for Trump).
They knew Trump was a Putin cheerleader. Trump ran an openly pro-Russia campaign and, despite seemingly having no concept of a mutually beneficial relationship, somehow managed to make an exception for Russia. He regularly quoted talking points from Russian propaganda sources.
They knew the Trump campaign had members with suspicious Russia ties. Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser, had extensive business ties to Russia, strongly pro-Russian views, and had once been targeted for recruitment as a Russian spy. During the campaign he traveled to Moscow and made a pro-Russia public speech. Paul Manafort, who served several months as campaign director, was an adviser and propagandist for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine. Michael Flynn, a major foreign policy adviser who Trump even considered for Vice President, was a semi-regular commentator for Russia Today who did a photo op with Putin.
They knew that Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos drunkenly boasted about being approached by Russian assets who offered him "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of e-mails.
Finally, and most controversially, there are unconfirmed reports that allied intelligence agencies, in the course of routine surveillance of Russian communications, kept picking up suspicious contacts with the Trump team:
It is understood that GCHQ [Government Central Headquarters, the British intelligence] was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.To the best of my knowledge, mainstream Republicans do not dispute most of these points. The Russian hack and release to Wikileaks are disputed by some in the crazy conspiracy fringe, but not the mainstream. Trump's pro-Russian stance and advisers with Russian ties are matters of public record beyond dispute. And Papadopoulos appears to have admitted to his drunken boast.
That leaves the purported spy in the Kremlin and the reports from allied intelligence of contacts between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. These are more nebulous matters, highly secret information that necessarily cannot be disclosed and therefore is easy to dispute and hard to confirm.
Even so, we have the Russian government hacking into the e-mails of one party and campaign chair and arranging the release of the materials in a manner calculated to do maximum harm. And we have the other candidate showing a general hostility to all other countries except Russia and running a team with at least three members who had extraordinary Russia ties. And a member (admittedly not high level) who was contacted by Russian agents and offered "dirt" on the other candidate.
Granted, all of these things could have been unrelated. On the other hand, there is that alarming but real possibility that they might be related. And wouldn't one want the Intelligence Community to find out whether these things were related or not? To which Republicans answer no, Trump was running for President, so any investigation was simply too politically sensitive to be done.
Even so, we have the Russian government hacking into the e-mails of one party and campaign chair and arranging the release of the materials in a manner calculated to do maximum harm. And we have the other candidate showing a general hostility to all other countries except Russia and running a team with at least three members who had extraordinary Russia ties. And a member (admittedly not high level) who was contacted by Russian agents and offered "dirt" on the other candidate.
Granted, all of these things could have been unrelated. On the other hand, there is that alarming but real possibility that they might be related. And wouldn't one want the Intelligence Community to find out whether these things were related or not? To which Republicans answer no, Trump was running for President, so any investigation was simply too politically sensitive to be done.
Trump’s position, and the consensus position of the conservative movement, is that, having become aware of a foreign intelligence service’s successful efforts to infiltrate a major party presidential campaign, the FBI should have done nothing about it, because the campaign in question happened to be a Republican one.
And if that is your view, it raises serious questions about how far this principle should go. If candidate Trump shot someone in front of Washington Monument** should that, too, go uninvestigated?
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*Presumably this would not apply to a primary opponent.
**If he had committed murder in the middle of Fifth Avenue, it would have been a matter under New York law, so the feds would not have been involved.
Monday, September 3, 2018
Back to Haiku
First Lear in the storm:
Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes spout
Till you had drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks,
You sulphrous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Sing my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world.
And now Edgar, describing the view from the top of a cliff:
How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down
Hangs one that gathers samphire -- dreadful trade;
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear as mice, and yond tall anchoring bark
Diminished to her cock, her cock a buoy
Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge
That on th' unnumbered idles pebbles chafes
Cannot be heard so high.
The purpose of these powerful images is clear. They were written to be spoken by actors on an empty stage. There would be stage hands underneath making thunder, but the rest of the scene was left to the audience's imagination. Shakespeare was painting a picture with words to allow them to see the scene. (He pulls a rather dirty trick in the second sequence -- Edgar is describing the scene to a blind man prepared to jump, but really they are not on the cliff at all).
Could one fit so powerful an image into 17 syllables? I understand that haiku does not have to exclude all human artifacts, or even be a nature poem at all, so long as there is a seasonal reference. Nonetheless, taking a few snatches from the poems that exclude human artifacts and take up about 17 syllables, we can get:
[T]hought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts
or
And thou, all-shaking thunder
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world.
or
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.
Show scarce so gross as beetles.
That last might possibly be made to work as haiku, the others are just too over the top. So, let me consider what the advise was last time I posted on understanding haiku. From my sister:
The goal is to make you stop short and review scenes that you think are familiar. Many haiku contrast two ranges of experience - perhaps visual and sound, or closeup and panoramic views, or natural and intentional language, in a tiny frame of thought. I think we are meant to suddenly contextualize a familiar scenario into a surprising or pleasing new setting.And from my mother:
I think of a haiku as a verbal snapshot that captures a transient moment—concrete, physical thing(s) seen/heard/smelled—in words that can recreate its full emotional impact when you encounter them again. Writing them can make you more observant and aware of the world around you.
. . . . .
The Japanese have developed elaborate rules for “classical” haiku: they have a seasonal reference (snow-winter, moon-fall, etc.), they describe things directly (not through similes or metaphors) in ordinary language, they usually juxtapose two items unexpectedly, they often make an elliptical leap between the second and third line, and so on.So if I try
Birds flying in air
Halfway down from the cliff top
Seem small as beetles.
It meets the 5-7-5 rule and is simple and literal without any extravagant flights of fancy. But I still have no sense of whether it achieves the rest of a haiku -- to make a snapshot that can recreate the experience. And I don't really see a contrast or juxtaposition. And to me as an English speaker, it just lacks the poetic power of the original.
Of course, this is me competing against Shakespeare, so we have to take that into account.
A Few Words of Comfort to Hillary Clinton
I know it must be tough being you. The degree of villification you have been subject to over the last quarter-century has been extraordinary, yet you have had the audacity not to be destroyed by it. Having your hopes dashed is bad enough, though it happens to half of all candidates. Losing to anyone so obviously unfit as Trump must be maddening. And now to serve as his ongoing scapegoat is an unprecedented thing. Watching our President to this day leading chants of "Lock her up" and reading his tweets berating the Justice Department for not prosecuting you are not only a monstros personal insult, but a slap in the face to the rule of law and our entire system of government.
But take comfort. The end is in sight. Next year the Democratic nomination contest will start heating up. A front runner may even emerge. And in two years there will be an actual nominee. And Trump and his followers will have a whole new target to incite the mob against and demand prosecution. They may even decide that you weren't so bad after all.
Note to Trump on John McCain
It is hardly a secret that Donald Trump and John McCain did not get along. They had many differences -- each in many ways, stood for what the other most opposed. But it would appear that Trump's biggest grudge against McCain was for his last vote in the Senate. McCain cast the truly deciding vote to stop Obamacare repeal and deprived Trump of the opportunity to undo his predecessor's signature domestic initiative.
Instead of resenting McCain, Trump should be thanking McCain for saving the Republican Party from itself. Suppose McCain had not cast that decisive vote. The monstrosity would have passed, Republicans would have shut down the exchanges where 10 million people get their health insurance, coverage would become unaffordable for numerous people with pre-existing conditions, and Republicans would be on record celebrating this as a great victory.
So, Republicans in general and Trump in particular, be grateful to McCain for saving you from yourselves.
Instead of resenting McCain, Trump should be thanking McCain for saving the Republican Party from itself. Suppose McCain had not cast that decisive vote. The monstrosity would have passed, Republicans would have shut down the exchanges where 10 million people get their health insurance, coverage would become unaffordable for numerous people with pre-existing conditions, and Republicans would be on record celebrating this as a great victory.
So, Republicans in general and Trump in particular, be grateful to McCain for saving you from yourselves.
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