Why Trump's Going to Win on the National Emergency

[DonViejo]

There’s one arena where the president always succeeds: getting the Republican Party to abandon its principles.

By JEFF GREENFIELD February 15, 2019

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

All through the 2016 campaign Donald Trump warned about the menace of immigration by reciting the lyrics of a song called “The Snake,” about a kind woman who takes a snake into her home, only to die when he bites her. The snake tells the woman, “You knew I was a snake before you took me in.”

It is now clear that, consciously or not, Trump was delivering a warning to the Republican Party about what he was going to do to it. Two years into his administration, Trump has recognized that the institutional power of the Republican Party has all the effectiveness of the Maginot Line. He can ignore its leaders, scorn them, or just smash through them with no lasting political damage.

Trump’s declaration of a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border is a high point, or low point, of a familiar pattern that is right out of Groundhog Day—or the Netflix series Russian Doll. Again and again, Trump embraces a policy, or reveals a character trait, that hits at the heart of what the Republican Party claims to stands for. In response, there is unhappiness, even anger, but never action. If you think the Republicans in Congress are going to stand up to Trump’s fake national emergency in order to defend the party’s long-held principles, or to assert the constitutional authority of the legislative branch, you haven’t been paying attention for the past three years. Trump said he would win so much that you’d get tired of winning—the lone arena in which this is objectively true is how he has imposed his will on his fellow Republicans, who have surrendered abjectly to him.

That’s why, on the national emergency, Trump is about to win again. Republican officeholders like Maine’s Susan Collins will surely reach for the thesaurus to find appropriate adjectives (“troubling,” “disturbing,” “unsettling”). The naysayers will look over their shoulders at a party base that stands solidly behind the president. And when the rubble clears, Trump will still be standing, and another key element of the catechism—this time, limited constitutional government with a separation of powers that was outlined by James Madison and other framers—will be in ruins.

At times, it’s possible to imagine the president almost willfully testing his party, musing about whether there is any part of its belief system that he cannot compel Republicans to abandon. Is character key to a good leader? White evangelicals, who once overwhelmingly supported that proposition, now reject it by landslide margins. Are deficits a mortal danger to the national economic health? Are international alliances crucial to national security?

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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/15/trump-national-emergency-225160

[marylandblue]

1. I'm not counting on the Republican Party, I am counting on 5 SCOTUS justices

Hopefully more than 5, but I think we'll get at least the 4 liberals and Roberts.

[bearsfootball516]

2. Exactly.

I'll be surprised if Roberts doesn't vote with the liberals on this one.

[Freethinker65]

3. Agree. SCOTUS is only hope in stopping it

Until Trump declares another National Emergency to disband the Supreme Court.

[empedocles]

4. Roberts is suspect. Roberts was with the evil 4 justiceson travel and trans bans, also environment

climate issues. Abuse of Executive power may not be enough to rile the ghosts of Taney tied to Roberts.

[GeorgeGist]

5. JEFF GREENFIELD?

thought he'd been retired.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. ha! "principles"! HA!

Greenfield lives in a fantasy world. "There’s one arena where the president always succeeds: getting the Republican Party to abandon its principles." No one has managed to get the Republican Party to abandon its two principles -- power and greed. Trump has provided the GOP with the means to enrich itself with money and power, both now and in the near future.

A "limited constitutional government with a separation of powers" is a core element of the Republican Party only when it is advantageous to the party in securing power and money. GOPers happily embrace a very powerful, expansive government with an overlap of powers when that is advantageous to them. See, e.g., such atrocities as the Patriot Act.

GOPers happily sold themselves and the rest of us for money and assistence from Putin and other Russian mobsters. They have remained true to their principles. There is no reason to believe they will abandon their greed for money or power over anything as trivial as the U.S. Constitution.

Greenfield should remain in his fantasy world inhabited by principled, ethical conservatives and Republicans. Few such creatures exist in this, the real, documented world, and I know of none in elected office.

[Vinca]

7. If it's allowed to stand, the very first thing the next Democratic POTUS should do is declare

a national emergency over gun violence. A bona fide emergency.