MC CONNELL AND TRUMP: FIGHT FOR CONROL OF GOP WITH THE SENATE AT STAKE

 

Conventional wisdom is that the GOP other than the loss of the Presidency are riding the crest of the wave. However, what has been bubbling for months barely below the surface, namely a fight for the control of the GOP and its core beliefs finally surfaced this week. McConnell after praising Trump to the G-ds announced, to Trump’s fury, that Biden was President Elect. Simplistically put, the issue at stake is whether the Grand Old Party is going to be a totalitarian party under Trump or is there still going to be a semblance of the democratic values that were once central to their belief system. On another level this is a contest as to who is going to be the de facto leader of the GOP in the next four years, Trump or McConnell.  

The Republican base has sided with Trump in his undisguised attempt at a coup d’etat even though there weren’t enough of them to have elected him President in the first place.One fact is evident there was no way Trump was going to take the party or country into account in his relentless narcissistic pursuit to overturn the election. His quixotic pursuit was putting the control of the Senate at risk with the upcoming Georgia elections. The outcome of the Senate elections would also play a role in who would be the dominant figure in the GOP as if the Republicans retained their seats, McConnell would remain in the powerhouse position he has occupied for the last decade. 

TRUMP ESCALATING FIGHT TO REVERSE ELECTION

In the absence of any leadership from the Republican establishment the base remains loyal to Trump in his unseemly battle to reverse a legitimate election. The bizarre situation where Trump was attacking Republican officials who were following the Constitution and declaring Biden the winner was playing out with a vengeance in the crucial Senate elections in Georgia which would decide the control of the Senate. Because of the mixed messages the Republican base were receiving, from Trump and his surrogates, in what should have been a pushover for the Republicans, the election has tightened and the polls indicate a statistical dead heat.

As the Inauguration date grew nearer and nearer a number of events forced Mitch McConnell to finally intervene. While Trump’s daily reversals in Court were routine the loss of his “Big One” where a total of eighteen Republican Attorney Generals and over half of the Republican House representatives sided with a blatantly political motion to reverse certified election results and make Trump President, was significant in that half the Republican Party had lined up with Trump to effect a coup through the Judiciary. This concerted action, unless challenged had to appear to be the consensus  policy of the GOP.  

The resounding defeat by the Supreme Court had no salutary effect on Trump or the Congresspeople. They were going to challenge the certified Electoral College Vote when it came up to Congress on January 6, 2021. However for there to be a real bohaai they needed at least one Republican Senator to go along with them and there were plenty of potential takers. 

GIVING TIME TO TRUMP TO ACCEPT BACKFIRES

Evidence of Trump going even more off the rails, if any was needed, was provided when he started attacking Attorney General Barr who when history is written will be exhibit one in aiding the Trump’s presidency to be totalitarian. Whitewashing the Mueller report, harassing Trump’s enemies, giving get out of jail cards to his friends, the list of Barr’s perfidy is endless. Yet for reporting the obvious on an investigation which was illegally ordered at Trump’s behest, that there was no meaningful fraud in the 2020 election, he had to go. .

 It had become obvious that the rationale being used by the Trump enablers that “just give him time to come to terms” was not working. In fact his obsession with the electoral outcome and paranoia that everyone was turning against him was worsening. It could not wait any longer for McConnell to gently but unequivocally let him know the facts.

 Even Fox News after almost six years of slavish subservience to The Leader got the “fake news” treatment for devoting some of its precious time to actually reporting the election results and for example forecasting that Arizona would go for Biden. They were being told how low their ratings were and that they were going to hell in a hand basket. They had “sold out and reached a new low by running endless negative and unedited commentaries!”, whined the POTUS. Fox’s response was to air on the shows that ran the Trump conspiracy theories with the least filters, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, a refutation of his arguments as spouted by him and two of his lawyers Rudi Giuliani and Sidney Powell. This followed litigation by one of the companies alleged to be involved in the conspiracy to make Biden the victor. Wonder what Hannity, Ingraham and Carson will have to say about that?

Trump’s almost total abandonment of Presidential duties in favor of his election fights and paranoia towards his “enemies” became more and more glaring as the Covid Pandemic spread like wildfire and the revelation of Russian warlike cyberattack on key American agencies and institutions. The former was not even mentioned by the President, while the belated comment on the latter was it was probably the Chinese. At least he didn’t postulate that it was some four hundred pound man sitting on a bed.  

TRUMP’S OBVIOUS DISINTEREST IN THE GEORGIA SENATE OUTCOME WAS EVEN MORE DISCONCERTING

What was even more dangerous and near and dear to McConnell’s heart was the control of the Senate. Trump and his surrogates were focussing in on Georgia’s Republican establishment to argue their case that the election result should be overturned.  While Trump was still ostensibly backing the GOP candidates his surrogates were attacking them for not doing enough to help the POTUS. Even though Loeffler and Perdue had joined the insane chorus to axe the Republican Secretary of State for incompetence in his execution of the November election they were being singled out for not getting the result reversed as their central mission. The pair were being challenged at their meetings for not having “Stopped the Steal”. 

 Lin Wood, one of Trump’s election lawyers, led the Georgia barrage. He escalated the assaults stating, inter alia, that Governor Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger would go to jail as they were under the pay of the Chinese Government. Many of his tweets were retweeted by the POTUS thus creating the confusion in the hardcore base. One of the retweets told the faithful to withhold their votes for Loeffler and Perdue unless they upped their attacks on the Republican establishment. Wood’s latest tweet basically foresaw an armed conflict, instructing the faithful to hunker down with all necessities including those encompassed by the Second Amendment. Wood even called for “corrupt” Chief Justice Roberts to resign.

Trump’s contribution rather than disassociate himself from this seditious tripe, was to remind Mitch, after he accepted the Electoral College outcome, “….that he got seventy five million votes - Too early to give up. Republican Party must learn to fight. People are angry”. So the wounded bear of a President was growing more and more angry each day rather than move to acceptance.

A report that Trump had foregone an opportunity to have another of his rallies in Georgia because of his anger towards the Georgia Republican establishment was conclusive evidence as to where his priorities lay. 

MCCONNELL’S DECISION IN THE HERE AND NOW

There has been no more amoral yet successful and determined leadership of the Republican Party than that of Mitch McConnell. He spent six years thwarting Obama’s agenda. He repeatedly attempted a cynical rejection of the Affordable Care Act for which he provided no replacement. He saw to it that it was his and Trump’s agenda that held sway loyally standing by him throughout. His objective was to appoint Federal Judges who had the right, literally, political and judicial philosophy, a task which he carried out relentlessly including the choice of the three Supreme Court Judges - this at the expense of addressing Covid relief. He will be best remembered for refusing a hearing for an Obama nomination to the Supreme Court because it was a year before the Presidential election. Then without batting an eyelid he pushed through in record time a Trump nominee two weeks before the recent Presidential contest.

It is reasonable to conclude that Mitch didn’t finally acknowledge Biden’s victory because it was the morally correct action. Rather it was because it was the least worst political action at this moment with the House Republicans set to challenge the decision of the Electoral College on January 6, 2021. Congress was due to break for the Xmas holidays soon. To let the situation just fester the Party could split or even worse become enveloped by Trumpism and never ever win the Presidency again. So after his declaration he had each and every member of the Republican Senate caucused not to assist the House Republicans in their effort to challenge the electoral college vote. He argued that that could result in Senate members being forced to vote against the POTUS. It remains to be seen whether this injunction will hold.

If McConnell cannot hold his caucus together there will be a public vote in the Senate as well as the House whether to back a totalitarian coup d’etat or not. The Senate Majority leader is desperately trying to avoid any of his caucus having to publicly declare themselves against Trump. It is much easier to be seen to voting in favor of accepting the Election College decision. A calculation McConnell has also made, based on the outcome of the 2020 down ballot results is that a significant portion of the electorate were prepared to vote for the Republican legislators but against Trump. If the latter remains the sole face of Republican policy then they will definitely lose the Presidency again 2024. 

WHAT WAS CENTRAL TO MCCONNELL’S CALCULATION

Notwithstanding McConnell’s decision he would have avoided it if there wasn’t such a concerted effort to overturn the electoral college - an action which the protagonists haven’t the votes for. He wanted to keep his Senate caucus out of it. If he couldn’t his personal leadership would also take a blow and the public would be spectators to a gigantic fight within the Republican Party, which Trump will tweet ad nauseam that anyone who opposes not re electing him President was disloyal to the Republican Party. 

McConnell’s knowing that Biden’s Presidency was a certainty needed to maintain his position of power. By his decision and concerted effort to keep the Senate out of it, his leadership of the Republican Party was unchallengeable. If the Republicans retained the Senate he would be the center of gravity of the GOP not Trump. If they didn’t he didn’t need to be seen upping the feud with Trump. McConnell, in his calculations, believed that the Republicans would win the Georgia senate elections. The chances of a hundred thousand vote reversal within three months on its face was difficult to envision. The oddsmakers agreed with him giving Perdue and Loeffler a sixty to forty chance of winning. The GOP big donors have pored in another hundred million into Georgia recently. McConnell must also have the internal canvassing figures to help him make his decision. He wasn’t about to base any decision on the external polls which had underrated Republican support time and again.

McConnell knew that the Republicans were going to hand Trump a major defeat by voting to override his veto of the Defense Bill and that another highly publicized defeat of Trump would be more evidence of disarray within the Party.

WHAT CAN GO WRONG?

While Trump and the Republican Party have come out in favor of voting for Loeffler and Perdue, Trump is ambivalent. His Georgian election lawyer, Wood is attacking the Georgian Republican establishment which is key component of the Trump assault. It does not require a stretch of imagination that Trump believes his overturning the election is of a higher priority than winning Georgia Senate seats.

 A recent Fox Poll showed that the current bohaai made Trump voters four times more likely than Biden’s not to vote in the Senate reruns. In addition the Stacey Adams ground game has not stopped to breathe and they claim to have registered tens of thousand new voters. Apparently eighty - one thousand of the absentee voter requests were new voters. The record numbers of long lines of voters in the first week, most of whom were African American with umbrellas, did not strike Jay H. Ell as the Republican Black vote coming out early. Then Wood and Trump are not going to stop their attacks on the Georgia elected Republicans. Wood’s appeal not to vote for Loeffler and Perdue has gained traction and he is not backing off on them for not doing enough for Trump.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Mitch McConnell, as brilliant a tactician as he is, is no more omnipotent than Trump was thought to be. Jay H. Ell remembers his dejected look after the late John McCain walked into the Senate and pointed his thumb down kiboshing Trump’s effort to disband the Affordable Care Act. McConnell had through his sheer strength of personality cobbled a majority to axe an increasingly popular health program even in red states. However there are variables that you just can’t control and some of them exist in Georgia and by definition with Trump.