Our view: Republicans shouldn’t surrender to King Trump
Not long ago Republican senators could be counted on for thunderous speeches and scathing statements condemning an imperial president.
Arkansas’ two Republican Senators, Tom Cotton and John Boozman accused this president of “unprecedented executive overreach” when his administration offered government support for a wind farm in their state.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, irked over an executive order on immigration, took to mocking the president in a speech that quoted the Roman senator Cicero: “How long is that madness of yours still to mock us?” Cruz demanded.
Today, however, many of those same senators have lost their sense of outrage. Their efforts to stand against presidential overreach have been muted. Their principled statements in defense of Congress as a coequal branch have been forgotten. Their high principles, their proud defense of democracy — well, never mind all that.
What prompted this abrupt reversal is the simple fact that a Republican president, Donald Trump, has succeeded a Democratic one, Barack Obama.
As early as this week or next, the Senate is expected to vote on a plan to block Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to fund his border wall. That declaration is far more of an abuse of power than any committed by Obama, including his sweeping action granting protection from deportation to roughly a third of all undocumented immigrants. That order was quite rightly struck down in court.
Trump’s move runs roughshod over Congress’ power of the purse. Under the Constitution, Congress decides how tax dollars are spent. Trump’s emergency declaration takes spending for military construction and other purposes and retargets it at Trump’s border wall, a priority Congress declined to fund at the level Trump demands.
So far, four Republican senators have said they would vote to block the president’s power grab. One of them, Rand Paul, of Kentucky, says that at least 10 would eventually join. If so, that would be a far stronger showing than the mere 13 of the 197 Republicans in the House of Representatives who already voted to block Trump.
That will be a rebuke to the president and hopefully a sign of things to come if the president continues to defy constitutional norms. But the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of Republicans are likely to cave.
And regardless of increasing resistance among Republican senators, their votes are not expected to be enough to override Trump’s certain veto.
If a future Democratic president declares an emergency on gun control or climate change, it will be hard for these Republicans to take principled stands without invoking laughter. On that day, it will be clear that when Republicans sided with Trump, after mounting such a stink about Obama, they not only wounded their party, they undermined their country and the Constitution.