Oh Shut Up

 

"[Mitch] McConnell said he hopes Trump will ‘pay a price’ for Jan. 6 role, new book reveals"

--Headline, The Hill, 10/21/24

 

Tillis: Bowing To Trump "Is Immoral"

 

“I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy. It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

--Sen. Thom Tillis, Thursday, Jan. 25

As of yesterday, the White House and a bi-partisan group of Senators including Thom Tillis of North Carolina had reached a deal on a border security bill which will crack down on asylum requests and make other reforms the Republicans have wanted, thus unlocking foreign aid spigots for both Ukraine and Israel. The Biden administration went far to compromise on the border, motivated much by the crisis in Ukraine.

But also as of yesterday, Mitch McConnell, who's actually been a supporter for getting the border deal, told his Senate caucus that this particular border deal probably has zero chance of getting passed by the House, as Trump doesn't want it passed, because he intends to run on immigration horrors, so McConnell thinks it unlikely that House Republicans will buck the capo and vote for the very reforms they've been screaming about. "So you guys probably don't want to push it right now."

Thom Tillis flew mad. He urged his colleagues "not to make it all about politics at the behest of a candidate." Sen. Mitt Romney was more direct:

“The border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem — because he wants to blame Biden for it — is really appalling .... Someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’

 So to be clear, Tillis opposes Trump for the best reason -- "It is immoral." As he continues his current trajectory out of the MAGA embrace.

McConnell Needs To Save This Guy's Ass

 

Indebted once again to Jane Porter and her IndyWeek newsletter:

Mitch McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund is dumping $3.4 million into North Carolina's U.S. Senate race between candidates Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd, so now seems like a good time to remind everyone of why Budd, of all candidates running in 34 contested U.S. Senate races this November, is probably the most corrupt politician vying for a U.S. Senate seat this cycle. 

As a new website from the North Carolina Democratic Party details, Budd has been involved in a number of crooked deals, special interest funded travel, and financial scandals. He's also voted against the best interests of North Carolinians at most every turn. Here's a taste:

Budd has consistently taken money from big banks, and then voted to allow banks to charge customers high fees and stymied efforts to lower costs for regular working people.

Budd and his family screwed farmers out of $50 million in an agriculture scheme that went bankrupt and left more than $1.3 million behind in tax debt. We reported on that last September.

Budd traveled on the special interest dime, taking a series of trips worth $30,000 to destinations like Miami, Palm Beach, and Oslo, Norway and staying in $900-a-night luxury hotels. 

Budd voted against legislation in July that would lower gas prices and protect consumers from price gouging by big oil companies. A day before, he had taken $5,000, the legal maximum campaign contribution, from big oil PAC Continental Resources Inc.

Days before voting against H.R. 3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act in 2019, Budd took $2,500 from GlaxoSmithKline's PAC and $1,000 from Pfizer's.

This is all in addition to siding with predatory payday lenders after taking their money, voting against funding for child abuse prevention services, voting against a bill to address the infant formula shortage, and initially voting against a bill to assist veterans.

Not great! Sometimes it's just helpful to keep all the corruption catalogued in one place. 

Republicans Are Better at Party Discipline

 

I believe Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell waited a respectable one hour after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg before announcing that his statement made in February 2016 shortly after Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to SCOTUS was no longer operable: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice . . . . Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Republican senators -- most of whom had loudly and piously agreed with McConnell's new doctrine in 2016 -- began falling in line. They'll vote -- the vast majority of them anyway -- to confirm whomever Trump nominates because they can and they must because "pretty much everybody is a hypocrite when their interests are on the line, and American politics have always been about the naked exercise of power. As Thucydides wrote 2,500 years ago, as the world’s first democracy was collapsing around him, the 'strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.' Mitch McConnell, like any politician, will do what the people let him get away with" (Michael Austin).

We're all calculating right now what McConnell can get away with. Still no word from Mitt Romney and Chuck Grassley about how they'll vote on the power-grab. If they joined Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, that would be the four to stop McConnell from getting Trump's third appointment to SCOTUS -- as doubtful as that scenario is -- because of the Republican long habit of strict party discipline, exacerbated now by a president with a mean Twitter-finger. Democrats, on the other hand, have no discipline and don't seem likely to develop any in my lifetime.

I heard ex-Senator Claire McCaskill talking this morning. She said she had been speaking over the weekend with some of her former colleagues in the Senate from both parties, and she floated the plausible scenario that McConnell might wait until the lame-duck period after the election to force a vote because having the fate of a new appointment to SCOTUS hanging in the precarious balance would do more for boosting Republican turnout than getting that person confirmed right away before November 3rd. 

It's an interesting theory, and I certainly hope it makes perfect sense to Mitch McConnell.

When Your Own Children Can't Stand Your Morals

A must-read is Jane Mayer's new lengthy profile of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chief enabler of Trump in the US Congress. Like most New Yorker pieces, it's exhaustive -- but what else are we going to do in a Plague Year but read long pieces about a thoroughly despicable top Senate enabler of the worst president in history?

Intensely interesting factoids in the piece like this: McConnell's three daughters have completely deserted their father's politics:

McConnell also appears to have lost the political support of his three daughters. The youngest, Porter, is a progressive activist who is the campaign director for Take On Wall Street, a coalition of labor unions and nonprofit groups which advocates against the “predatory economic power” of “banks and billionaires.” One of its targets has been Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and C.E.O. of the Blackstone Group, who, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, has, since 2016, donated nearly thirty million dollars to campaigns and super pacs aligned with McConnell. Last year, Take On Wall Street condemned Blackstone’s “detrimental behavior” and argued that the company’s campaign donations “cast a pall on candidates’ ethics.”

Porter McConnell has also publicly criticized the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, which her father considers one of his greatest achievements. On Twitter, she accused Kavanaugh’s supporters of misogyny, and retweeted a post from StandWithBlaseyFord, a Web site supporting Christine Blasey Ford, one of Kavanaugh’s accusers. The husband of McConnell’s middle daughter, Claire, has also criticized Kavanaugh online, and McConnell’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, is a registered Democrat.

All three daughters declined to comment, as did their mother, Sherrill Redmon, whom McConnell divorced in 1980. After the marriage ended, Redmon, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, left Kentucky and took over a women’s-history archive at Smith College, in Massachusetts, where she collaborated with Gloria Steinem on the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project. In an e-mail, Steinem told me that Redmon rarely spoke about McConnell, and noted, “Despite Sherrill’s devotion to recording all of women’s lives, she didn’t talk about the earlier part of her own.” Steinem’s understanding was that McConnell’s political views had once been different. “I can only imagine how painful it must be to marry and have children with a democratic Jekyll and see him turn into a corrupt and authoritarian Hyde,” she wrote. (Redmon is evidently working on a tell-all memoir.)

McConnell's ex-wife's "tell-all memoir" will maybe make a good stocking-stuffer for next Christmas.

100,000 or 220,000? The Deal That Trump Has Dealt Us

Yesterday, March 31, 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told radio host Hugh Hewitt that the impeachment of President Trump distracted the administration’s attention away from the coronavirus crisis. Plain English version: Trump screwed up because the Democrats were mean to him.

Let's see: The US Senate, led by McConnell, acquitted Trump on February 5. The first US coronavirus death was reported on February 29. Between the 5th and the 29th, what was Trump doing?

Feb. 10 -- He held a campaign rally (Manchester)
Feb. 15 -- He golfed (Mar-a-Lago)
Feb. 19 -- He held a campaign rally (Phoenix)
Feb. 21 -- He held a campaign rally (Las Vegas)
Feb. 28 -- He held a campaign rally (North Charleston)

During the last rally on Feb. 28 (according to Snopes), Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's coronavirus response to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." During the speech he also downplayed the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu. This now discarded Trump company line is still boilerplate for many on the right, including a handful of Trumpist Republican governors who refuse to take steps to protect their citizens. DeSantis in Florida. Tate Reeves in Mississippi. Et cetera.

The CDC issued its first warning about the virus on January 8th. In January alone -- while he might conceivably have been "distracted" by impeachment -- Trump held four rallies -- on Jan. 9 (Toledo), Jan. 14 (Milwaukee), Jan. 28 (Wildwood, NJ), and Jan. 30 (Des Moines).

Yeah, he was distracted all right

Moscow Mitch's Money Is Meddling in the NC Democratic Senatorial Primary

Jim Morrill and Brian Murphy reported in Friday's News Observer:

A group tied to the Republican U.S. Senate leader is behind the mysterious super PAC that has poured millions into TV ads for North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Erica Smith. 

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, gave nearly $3 million to the Faith and Power PAC, according to new reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. It is the PAC’s lone contributor. 

Faith and Power has spent $3 million on TV ads and mailers in support of Smith, who has lagged in her own fundraising. The PAC’s recent TV ads attack her main rival, Cal Cunningham, from the left. The newest ad says he won’t stand up to the NRA or for the LGBTQ community in addition to saying he won’t vote for Medicare for All or the Green New Deal.

We are clear that Mitch McConnell and those allied with him do not think that Erica Smith should be elected. They do not support her. They're using deceptive advertising to force Cunningham to bleed money pointing out the deception.

Democratic Losers in 2018 May Be Reborn as 2020 Winners

Could losing a high-profile Congressional race in 2018 actually fuel a Democratic candidate into winning a 2020 Senate race?

That's the question facing two women who were favorites of ours last year: Amy McGrath in Kentucky and M.J. Hegar in Texas. Both veterans of the military -- McGrath an ex-fighter pilot and Hegar an ex-helicopter pilot -- they were also both remarkably good at making an impression and raising money.

McGrath lost her race to incumbent Republican Congressman Andy Barr in the Kentucky 6th by 9,700 votes out of almost 303,000 total votes cast. M.J. Hegar lost to incumbent Republican Congressman John R. Carter in the Texas 31st by 8,300 votes out of 286,000. Both significantly closer than should have been expected, because the Kentucky 6th was rated R+10 and the Texas 31st, a whopping R+21. Pretty good damn showing for first-time novice candidates.

Politico reported back in February -- but I just found it today -- that Sen. Chuck Schumer was trying to recruit McGrath to go after Mitch McConnell's Senate seat. That would excite a lot of people, but McGrath underperformed in the rural precincts of the 6th District and would need a new plan for running statewide, which is majorly rural. The urban-rural divide is the battle line right now, and the McGrath campaign would have to grapple with why there's resistance to her among rural people -- despite her being an accomplished warrior for America, a Marine, one of the first female fighter pilots in U.S. history, a wife, and a mother.





Here's the best part for Amy McGrath, if she decides to run again: Mitch McConnell is underwater in his own state, and has been for some time. His approval rating in Kentucky was 33% this past February, with a 56% disapproval. In 2017, he had an 18% approval rating.


M.J. (Mary Jennings) Hegar describes herself as "an ass-kicking, motorcycle-riding Texas Democrat." She's an actual war hero. She has a Purple Heart (as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor) for combat in Afghanistan, where she piloted rescue helicopters. She's married now with two young children and lives in Round Rock. And she's got an Expert Marksman rating with both handgun and rifle.

The "ass-kicking" part came across loud and clear in her introductory video:





Hegar is already in as a candidate. She announced in April. She'll have to get past Joaquin Castro in a primary (along with a host of lesser-known Democrats). Joaquin is twin brother to Julian of presidential debate fame and the mayor of San Antonio. He's probably better known than Hegar statewide, so that primary will be no picnic. I don't think that will deter M.J. Hegar in the least.

UPDATE
Amy McGrath announced she was running against McConnell on July 9.

The Bankruptcy of the Republican Party

And you can add to that the complete moral and ethical bankruptcy of Franklin Graham and much of the evangelical movement.

Thom Tillis Is With Mitch McConnell

High Time We Took a Wrecking Ball to the System

In the US Congress, HR1 is a bill number traditionally reserved by the majority for its most important legislation, the bill that will shape a new era under whichever ruling party. The Democrats in the US House unveiled their HR1 yesterday, "To expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants."

Commentators are calling it "sweeping legislation," not only in the sense of wideness of impact but in the sense of sweeping out the accumulated political corruption of a system geared to those with money (and hence, influence). "Sweeping" doesn't strike me as nearly strong enough. HR1 takes a sledgehammer to public corruption, the evils of gerrymandering, the selling of political favors, and all attempts to suppress voter rights.

When passed, this law will mandate independent redistricting commissions for all the states. It will establish automatic voter registration (which comes as a birthright), and it will end the continued disenfranchisement of felons after they've served their time.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans -- including most of those Twitterman voters -- were and still are pretty unhappy with the way our political system is working and think the whole system is rigged against them. They ain't wrong. HR1 intends to change that by mandating more transparency for the campaign finance system -- no more big-dollar anonymity -- and empowering everyday Americans "with a powerful new system that rewards and amplifies small donors" -- a public financing system that would make a 6-to-1 Federal match on small donations. That might make politicians visit living rooms in their district more frequently and private country clubs less often.

HR1 would make sure that public servants actually serve the public, not use their office for personal gain. That means strengthening ethics across all three branches of government, ending the revolving door in Washington, and reining in lobbyists. Hurray!

Mitch McConnell has already announced that HR1 will get no hearing whatsoever in the Senate. No surprise. And of course Twitterman would never sign such a law, since self-enrichment is his entire reason for breathing. But at least the new Democratic Congress has laid down a marker for where we must go to preserve some semblance of our democracy. And there's another election coming in less than two years.

The Ritual Humiliation of Mitch McConnell

Yesterday in the Rose Garden,
Mitch McConnell agreed to put his
testicles into an undisclosed location

A couple of hours before Trump was claiming McConnell as his bestest friend evah yesterday, he was blaming McConnell for all the dysfunction in the Trump administration at a cabinet meeting.

In the Rose Garden, with McConnell shrinking beside him: McConnell's a "friend of mine for a long time," said Trump, and we're "closer than ever before."

At the Cabinet meeting earlier in the day: Trump said he was frustrated that Republicans had not accomplished more of his agenda but added that he's "not going to blame myself, to be honest."

If I were Mitch McConnell, I think I'd be very careful about that "closer than ever before." Especially with Trump's other (truer) BFF Steve Bannon delivering a blunt warning to McConnell in front of iPootValues conservatives over the weekend: “Up on Capitol Hill, it’s the Ides of March .... They’re just looking to find out who is going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar.”

Good God. Has ever a threat of lethal backstabbing been more publicly delivered?

Okay, I'm really delighted that Bannon read Julius Caesar in high school. I'm delighted that anybody in the Trump administration reads anything beyond their Q-Rating. But if I were Mitch McConnell, who scarcely a day after that Bannon attack was standing in dagger distance of Trump, I would not be locked in any embrace with the man who always turns on his friends when he needs to blame someone for his own failings.

True, McConnell has so richly earned all this grief from the leader of his own party, who understands nothing about legislating and cares even less. McConnell punished Obama for eight years by obstructing everything, and now he must endure the idiot in the Oval Office who's pulling down the temple on all their heads.

As you should know by now, I'm a connoisseur of political irony, and at this moment I find the circle closing like a snap purse. Consider the ads McConnell ran in 1984 to defeat Democratic Senator Dee Huddleston and thus began his rise to this present moment. You indeed can't run from your record, Mitch.

Alabama Republicans Go Retro

Alabama Republican voters picked Roy Moore last night. The man who holds a gun funny, wears a cowboy hat as a helmet, and wants to make his religion the law of the land. Note: his religion is not exactly the loving kind. They call him "Judge," and he does.

Can things get any worse for Mitch McConnell? It was pile-on-Mitch all day yesterday. Another repeal&replace bill sunk like an anvil in his own caucus. Another of his most influential lieutenants and committee chair, Bob Corker of Tennessee, announced he'd had enough and would not run for reelection in 2018, setting the stage for another potential circus of a Republican primary in 2018 in which the name "McConnell" will mean approximately shit. Mitch became the Nancy Pelosi of the Republican Party yesterday.

(Meanwhile -- and by the way -- who's the Tennessee Democrat for that race? More about that below.)

And the cherry on the top of yesterday for Ole Mitch ... Roy Moore, ascendant, coming at him with the lash of retarded righteousness. Everyone expects Moore to win the general. It'll be Moore v. Doug Jones, the Democrat who won his own primary on August 15 (see below). But the actual election isn't until December 12, and that's more than adequate time for a well-funded alternative to Moore to build a case. A Democratic candidate who "fits the state" and is firm to the touch has every opportunity for upsetting Judge Moore (especially in an age when anything can happen politically, and does).

Doug Jones

Nobody thinks Jones can win. Except maybe Jones himself. He's the underdog, no doubt. But he's also no coward (the cases he prosecuted as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama produces evidence of moral conviction and courage). Asked how in the world he thought he could overcome the Republican advantage in Alabama, Jones said, "At the end of the day, they [the voters of Alabama] are worried about their children, they are worried about their elderly parents, like I am. They're concerned about where their jobs are going to come and what's going to come into this state."

Nothing wrong with that, but needs some cooking on some fire. Can he translate that (populist) message into a movement in his direction? Dunno. Experts say, Proly not.

Probably.

The worst set of numbers for Democrat Jones, IMO, come from the Aug. 15 primary: "Moore received 162,570 total votes, which was more than the entire Democratic field. Jones won his primary with 104,549 votes, or 65.6 percent of the 154,481 votes cast by Democrats" (al.com). Jones has to build Democratic energy in a state where Democrats have been defeatists for more than a decade. A Democrat hasn't won a statewide election since 2008 and hasn't won a U.S. Senate race since 1992.

So ... back to the sudden opening in Tennessee: Who's the Democrat to run for Corker's seat against whatever candidate survives the Republican primary? Will the Tennessee GOP be weaker after the Trumpists tear the establishment apart? Might the Democrats nominate Nashville Mayor Megan Barry? Or US Congressman Jim Cooper? Who then? The only Democrat who's actually declared his candidacy is a virtual unknown, James Mackler, a Nashville attorney and Iraq war veteran.

Trump Plays Russian Roulette in Alabama

...and three chambers in the gun are loaded.

Trump continually proves the old saying: "You can't out-think a man who ain't thinking."

He didn't think enough before endorsing Luther Strange in the August Alabama primary. Strange had been appointed (more about that tainted appointment below) temporarily to fill Jeff Sessions' Senate seat and was running for the permanent job against a couple of other Alabama conservatives. Strange had a leg up. He was already the incumbent, and he was a favorite of Mitch McConnell (actually, his boy. Since his appointment, Strange has become a very dependable grunt in the McConnell squad. And McConnell has shepherded millions of campaign aid into Strange's bank account). Trump wanted to lead that band, so he took over as drum major and announced, "Luther Strange -- my boy too!"

Trump apparently thought the August Alabama Senate primary was mainly between Luther Strange and Congressman Mo Brooks. There was some other guy running, but he wasn't a factor (somebody said). Brooks had been bitter as gall to Trump. He had righteously slammed the door before Trump got the nomination: “Donald Trump is an adulterer,” Brooks hissed in an interview in 2016. He clearly detests Trump, and why would Trump want another Ron Paul in the Senate?

That third guy in the race? According to Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, "it was unclear whether Trump fully grasped the potential" of former Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore.

Oopsy.

Roy Moore

Moore is a Bible-thumper and an Alabama celebrity (for defying Caesar in the name of Jesus). He has the personality of a yellow-jacket. He's been twice removed as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, cause he's a populist in the tradition of George Wallace. So he makes mainstream and country-club Republicans nervous, while some rural Democrats like him. Lots of Republicans too, cause Roy Moore won that August primary by six percentage points over Strange. Third-place finisher Mo Brooks quickly endorsed Moore, and so did former White House puppeteer Steve Bannon.

Hmmm. Maybe Trump finally thought. "Is it a good thing to stay balls-to-the-wall in a Republican primary where my guy is already a loser? And while Steve-O is backing the other guy?" Because Trump suddenly -- after going mute on support for Strange since last August -- just tweeted a day ago Strange's name in a positive way and announced he was going to Alabama tomorrow for a Strange rally. (Fill in your quip here.)

Luther Strange has become the embodiment of the Republican Establishment, the edifice that Bannon has vowed to blow up. Trump's had that mood too, channeling Bannon. How odd then it must have been for Trump to wake up and discover he's the avatar for a second-place swamp creature.

If Strange loses and Moore wins next Tuesday -- last poll I saw, Moore was leading Strange, 47 to 39 percent -- Trump looks both weak and foolish. If Moore wins next Tuesday, prospects for Democratic nominee Doug Jones goes up. Jones is a former U.S. prosecutor with a statewide reputation for courage. He prosecuted two men who set the bomb that killed those girls in the Birmingham church back on September 15, 1963.

What If Strange Wins Next Tuesday?

Doug Jones

Strange was appointed to the seat by Governor Robert Bentley. Bentley was at the time himself under investigation for various misdeeds (and he would soon resign from office in complete disgrace). At the time of his appointment, Strange was Attorney General of Alabama, which also meant he was in charge of investigating Governor Bentley. Solid journalism revealed that Strange had delayed and vacillated the Bentley investigation, and for that he got a seat in the Senate. Which he lobbied for.

Bentley and Strange were already tainted by revelations of general Republican corruption in Alabama government at that time. The Speaker of the Alabama House had been convicted of profiting from his office in 2016 and sentenced to four years in prison. And the Bentley scandal was long-running and salacious.

In times like these, the nomination of Strange could produce a revolt among Republicans and an opportunity for Democrat Doug Jones. Either way, with whichever Republican wins the primary, the watch goes to Jones, whose prospects will depend on his smarts and his money. He's bringing Joe Biden to Alabama the week after the Republican run-off between Strange and Moore.

Trump: Full Frontal with the Democrats

Photo by Al Drago for the NYTimes

House Speaker Paul Ryan had earlier in the day yesterday called "the deal" that Trump struck with Congressional Democrats "ridiculous" and "disgraceful." Yet Trump jumped at the offer from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to tie Hurricane Harvey relief to a three-month extension of government funding and increase in the debt ceiling.

In other words -- and the short version -- Schumer and Pelosi ate Republican lunch.

Besides Schumer and Pelosi, representing the Democrats, who else was there? Trump, yes, but also House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. All those Republicans opposed the Schumer-Pelosi plan -- one might say, opposed it bitterly -- but Trump ignored them. In fact, later on Air Force One, on his way to North Dakota, Trump deliberately praised Schumer and Pelosi for striking a deal with him while not even mentioning the Republicans who were also in the meeting.

Schumer and Pelosi now have more than just leverage. Their three-month deal on the debt ceiling will force another painful vote for Republicans around Christmas time, with every chance of political disaster. Paul Ryan had wanted a debt ceiling extension of 18 months, which would have put another vote beyond the 2018 mid-term elections. Trump in effect shat in Ryan's hat.

Trump also later talked up the mutual willingness among the Trump-Schumer-Pelosi triumvirate to make the "Dream Act" (DACA) into solid law. Trump now wants the Democrats in Congress to save him from the blowback over his tromping on DACA on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ryan and McConnell fumed in the corner like jilted spouses in a nasty divorce.

The deal struck between the Democrats and Trump still has to go for votes in both House and Senate, and many Republicans are steaming mad about it. “The Pelosi-Schumer-Trump deal is bad,” Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska tweeted. Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, chair of the Republican Study Committee, said, “I’m still processing this, but my first instinct is I’m not very happy about it." But can Republicans afford to vote against it?

Score one for Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

And Then You Destroy Yourself

Mitch McConnell has reportedly had it with Trump. He's now openly speculating that Trump won't be president for long.

According to Burns and Martin, "Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense."

"In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, and berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match."

What came next out of Trump's mouth, according to White House leakers, might be of interest to Robert Mueller. (Rachel Maddow highlighted it last night on her show.) "[Trump] was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election."

Some people think that line of argument, directed at the Senate Leader, might be part of a pattern of obstruction of justice.

Last night, Trump upped his ante against McConnell. He badmouthed both Republican Arizona senators while standing on a stage in Phoenix. "Take that, Turtle Boy!"

Also last night in Phoenix, Trump found a new way to threaten McConnell. He said he "might" -- which means he just that second thought of it -- might shut down the government over funding for his border wall.

Which drew this response from Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire: If Mr. Trump “can’t participate constructively,” the House and Senate will have to govern on their own -- “Failure to do things like keeping the government open and passing a tax bill is the functional equivalent of playing Russian roulette with all the chambers loaded,” Sen. Gregg quipped.

Al Hoffman, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, said of Trump, “I think he’s going to blow up, self-implode.”

Butch and Sundance Take a Powder

Republican senators Jerry Moran (Kansas) and Mike Lee (Utah) held hands last night and jumped together, announcing they wouldn't support the Republican health insurance bill, thus killing the thing doornail-dead. They made their announcements in tandem, according to Thomas Kaplan, so that neither one of them could be fingered as "the definitive vote" that killed the Obamacare repeal and replace initiative.

Brave souls!

Now Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he'll call for a vote on repealing without a replacement either in mind or in place, which sounds like a super-duper, double-scoop of wonderful to us. Go for it, Mitch! Let's watch that play out.

Brilliant Idea: Repeal Obamacare And Replace With the Affordable Care Act!

When a Republican senator tells the truth, it makes news.

Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania said, “Look, I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win. I think most of my colleagues didn’t. So we didn’t expect to be in this situation” -- trying to repeal and replace Obamacare with a plan that might actually work to the benefit of U.S. citizens.

"Every important Republican leader expected Democrat Hillary Clinton to win, and that left Republicans confused and paralyzed about how to proceed when she didn’t." (Paul Kane)

Adding to Republican paralysis -- the Trump administration's failure to "staff up" with knowledgeable people who can conceive, frame, and push policy: "...Trump’s public musings, sometimes in media interviews and sometimes on Twitter, have also sowed division on policy matters — and scared away top Republican talent from senior administration posts."

McConnell Signaled a New Idea Yesterday

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, frustrated at every turn at rooting out Obamacare, stepped forth yesterday with a new idea: If we can't repeal and replace Obamacare, perhaps we should work with Democrats to shore up the Affordable Care Act.

“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” McConnell said. “No action is not an alternative. We’ve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state.”

Given McConnell's droning voice -- a monotone with little inflection and no trace of emphasis -- it might be easy to miss the revolutionary bomb contained in those two sentences. 

McConnell's suggestion yesterday that he and his Republican colleagues might spend money to rescue the ACA insurance markets (which he and his colleagues have spent months saying were beyond repair) will be one of the greatest feats of "newspeak" since "we had to destroy the village to save the village." But Republicans are fully capable of simply redefining words and disappearing whole years of rhetoric.

We're pulling for you, McConnell!

There Are Always Casualties in Rollerball

Gen. Michael Flynn, who's clearly lusting for combustion, has put Iran "on notice." Flynn, who famously peddled the rumor that Hillary Clinton was involved in child prostitution and who is obviously therefore rash and incendiary by nature, is just visibly itching with the pleasure of bombing someone.

But don't completely despair. Flynn displayed sufficient calm to remember to blame President Obama for Iran's need to be stomped on by Trump. Mission accomplished.

The combustible Trump administration is showing off its diplomatic skills everywhere. You heard that Trump hung up on a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the issue of accepting -- by previous agreement with President Obama -- 1,200 refugees from the Middle East who had tried to reach Australia by boat.

That damn Obama!

He didn't hang up on the prime minister until after he had boasted about his electoral win, which apparently didn't impress Mr. Turnbull as much as it should have. You're possibly sending us "the next Boston bomber," Trump raged at Turnbull.

Trump's first covert military assault on Al Quaeda in Yemen, about which he bragged and pranced, was actually FUBAR, and the Pentagon has admitted as much. "Qaeda fighters were somehow tipped off to the stealthy advance" of the Seal 6 commando troops, and "through a communications intercept, the commandos knew that the mission had been somehow compromised."

Their knew they were compromised, yet no one in charge aborted the mission. So a village-wide firefight ensued, a member of the Navy's Seal Team 6 was killed, three others wounded, a $75 million MV-22 Osprey aircraft took a hard landing (which injured an additional three crew members) and had to be destroyed by airstrike, and an unknown number of civilians including children were killed.

And by the way, again …  it was all Obama's fault, because the mission was initially planned for a moonless night during his presidency but was not executed because the next moonless night would not occur until the Trump presidency.

"Go nuclear," Trump told Mitch McConnell, referring to the confirmation of his Supreme Court pick, but maybe he meant the whole world.

“The whole thing is scary,” said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. “They have no appreciation for the Constitution, much less the unwritten norms of liberal democracy.”

The Cato Institute said that.