Republicans in Disarray?

By Yuval Levin

Thursday, December 19, 2024

 

Well that didn’t take long. The fight to get some kind of government funding bill done to close out this Congress and make way for the second Trump term nearly reached an almost adequate conclusion, when Republicans decided to get in their own way. It will get resolved. But what happened on Wednesday was a warning sign about how the next Congress and administration will begin.

 

Even early yesterday, when it seemed like Speaker Johnson’s CR would make it, the process by which it had taken shape offered some serious red flags about the strategy Republicans have in mind for next year. But the way it got derailed should turn those red flags into blaring sirens and at the very least should cause some rethinking of the two-reconciliation-bill strategy that is the goal for early next year at this point.

 

To begin with, it showed that President-elect Trump’s basic disposition has in no way changed since his first term. This is how he governs, and it’s going to be very difficult to make this work with a razor-thin House majority. Speaker Johnson seems to have gotten some input from Trump and his team along the path toward a CR, but apparently no clear indication of support or opposition. He says he also got words of understanding from the other end of the binary star system in which MAGA must now orbit: Elon Musk. But he seems to have thought that expressions of understanding for his governing predicament were akin to commitments not to publicly attack his strategy at a critical moment. That this was not the case is a bad sign for the coming months.

 

That is because what happened yesterday suggests that Trump (and Musk) is only capable of thinking like an outsider, fanning outrage at the acts of politicians. He can’t think like an insider, building complicated coalitions for governing action. This was the general pattern of Trump’s first term, though there were some exceptions. Maybe we will see exceptions this time, too, but yesterday’s shenanigans suggest the rule will be the same.

 

This is how a portion of House Republicans operate too, of course, putting themselves outside of the work of the institution and approaching it as critical observers rather than essential participants. But for Trump’s agenda to advance, he will need them to operate differently, since he needs the votes of every single House Republican in his early months. That means he will need to operate differently himself. If he and his team can’t think as policymakers, it’s going to be very hard to drive the Freedom Caucus to do so.

 

You can see that in the particular demand Trump made here. Dealing with the debt-ceiling in this lame-duck session of Congress is not in itself a bad idea at all. It makes sense that Trump would want to clear it off Congress’s plate before his term gets going. But doing that while Democrats still control the Senate is going to require tremendous unity among Republicans (and would have been an idea to raise many weeks ago, too). Many House Republicans have never voted to raise the debt-ceiling in their congressional careers. They have been content to let others in both parties carry that burden while they stand outside and jeer on the internet. Is Trump now going to force them to vote for a debt-ceiling increase, on top of a bill they already oppose? Is he going to get both houses and the Biden White House to start this process over to produce an entirely different bill, with a government shutdown starting in the background, and expect it to end up in a better place for Republicans?

 

Even if they get such a bill, will it be worth risking the impression of chaos and incompetence? That impression may turn out to be Trump’s most significant vulnerability with voters in the early months of his second term. His policy views aren’t particularly unpopular, and he isn’t seen as illegitimate this time. But my hunch is that the big worry voters have about Trump is that he’s an agent of chaos when they want to see things under control. Playing into that sense is how things could fall apart for him. But have he and his team thought with congressional Republicans about how to avoid that?

 

This may be the biggest warning sign of all from the lame-duck appropriations process, and especially yesterday’s drama. It just isn’t clear that it is possible for Republicans to do much forward planning right now. What are they willing to give the Democrats in return for doing this at Trump’s beckoning? How is Speaker Johnson supposed to survive this turn of events? Or why would they want to start the next Congress, with the narrowest House majority in many decades and lots on their agenda, by having a speaker fight? Where does this appropriations fight fall among the priorities for Trump’s second term? Is it worth the cost of starting off with a government shutdown, demoralized House Republicans, and re-moralized congressional Democrats?

 

If they can’t ground their strategic thinking in the answers to such questions, then Republicans need much simpler and more blunt sorts of strategies than they now have in mind for next year. They should assume they will have no room to maneuver and no space to do anything fancy.

 

They will find their way out of this particular mess soon enough. It’s not the end of the world. But the way this is playing out suggests they are setting themselves up for a very bumpy ride in 2025.