Obstruct and delay Trump
Should Democrats cooperate with President Trump? To answer this question, they must first understand the lesson of the past eight years. Republican obstruction under President Obama was unprecedented and deliberate.
Senate Republicans sharply escalated the use of filibusters to delay legislation, Cabinet appointments and judicial nominees. Rather than doing the business of the American people, House Republicans precipitated multiple crises over the budget, shut down the federal government at an economic cost of $24 billion in 2013, and repeatedly threatened a default for partisan gain.
The result is that little meaningful legislation has passed since 2010. Last year, Senate Republicans disregarded the clear intent of the Constitution by refusing to hold hearings on Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat. With Trump’s victory in November, the GOP has stolen the court’s all important swing vote.
What price did the GOP pay for this constitutional hardball? Nothing. Republicans now control the House, the Senate and the presidency, as well as a majority of governorships and state legislatures. Most casual observers of politics simply don’t understand or care about parliamentary procedure. They only see the ugliness, and they usually blame the president’s party.
Democrats must therefore adopt the GOP’s scorchedearth philosophy. No votes for Cabinet picks or judges. No bipartisan cover for bad legislation. No deals. The North Carolina GOP just proved that you can’t trust an agreement made in good faith with today’s Republican Party anyway. And rest assured: There will be no good legislation.
The emerging bargain is that Vichy Republicans will give Trump his immigration crackdown and his neo-Smoot-Hawley tariff regime. In exchange, Trump will sign the GOP’s starve-thy-neighbor governing agenda into law.
Nothing in this exchange should look appealing to Democrats, who must use what little procedural power they have left to obstruct and delay, and to turn an already hostile public decisively against Trump and his enablers.