Republicans in revolt

With a killer hurricane bearing down on Florida, and cleanup just begun in Texas and Louisiana, the House GOP’s Freedom Caucus remained in a blissful state of denial Friday, merely confirming that President Trump was right to cut a deal with Democrats.

The vote in the House on Friday to provide $15.25 billion in disaster relief and extend government funding and the federal borrowing limit until Dec. 8 was 316-90. All of the 90 “no” votes were Republicans, including four from the Texas delegation.

Or more precisely they are, as a Washington Post article called them, the “vote no, hope yes” caucus — intent on maintaining their own ideological purity as long as it doesn’t really matter in the end.

The increasingly grumpy Republican purists reportedly even hissed and booed during a presentation by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who not long ago was co-founder of the Freedom Caucus.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pretty much had it right when she said of the Republican revolt, “If I ever as leader or as speaker had 90 members vote against one of the easiest bills to vote for, which is disaster assistance, you know they have a philosophical problem with governance.”

So yes the battle lines have now been, well, re-drawn — with a nominally Republican president unencumbered by anything resembling governing principles, picking up votes where and from whom he can. Ideological purity on the right seems suddenly out of style.