#15: Time To Take Advantage of a Growing Republican Schism

This is the next of a new series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

Please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

In earlier times, to call anything part of the “infrastructure” could get you cold shouldered at a Capitol Hill reception. It was thought to be the most wonky and un-astute of terms, to be carefully avoided any time someone wanted to pass or even talk about a bill about highways, transit or water supply.

Now it is a word that provides sanctuary. Those seeking protection are the 17 Republican Senators (including Mitch McConnell) who plan to complete this deal with Joe Biden over the protests of Donald Trump, who doesn’t want Biden to get a win. These Senators will continue to ignore Trump on this matter because:

• They have known for as long as they have been in politics that our highways, bridges, and other public systems are troubled by under-investment.
• The Senate compromise contains any number of projects from which their own states will benefit, a fact which can easily be made known to voters.
• Trump himself promised an infrastructure bill which would have had some of the same elements, though it would have done far less for public transit, and nothing for community broadband, and electric vehicle recharging.
• They have been looking for something they could get away with doing with Democrats, because they wanted to believe that could happen.

Even in the worst of years, Republican and Democrats cooperate on any number of uncontroversial matters, just to keep government going. However, the percentage of proposals that are seen only through a partisan lens has grown, and with it the enmity born of constant dispute. It hasn’t been as much fun to go to the office anymore.

Excepting the infrastructure bill, in the past few decades there hasn’t been a bigger distance between what Republican Senators want for the country and what they are willing to do. A majority of Senate Republicans would have always passed a bill to protect Dreamers, or declared the election decided by late November, or kept the United States closer to NATO. They would have done such things if the fear of retribution from Trump and his hench-people had not been so high. 

They have not been inventing the danger of retribution, and it isn’t just in the House, where the early execution of Rep. Mark Sanford by Trump was watched with a shudder by any DC Republican with a soul and a pulse. In the Senate, Trump-inspired electoral vulnerability contributed to the retirement of Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee in 2018.

A huge bi-partisan infrastructure bill may signal the beginning of the end of an era. Consistent with his previous behavior, Trump has threatened to recruit primary opponents against the 17 Republican miscreants and thus throw them out as RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). Those threatened are privately celebrating that it is an empty threat. Only 3 of the 17 apostates are up for re-election in 2022. Six are retiring and are leaving openings in their states for good Democratic candidates. Lisa Murkowski is already being challenged because of multiple wonderful slights of Trump. That leaves John Hoeven of North Dakota and Todd Young of Indiana to be “primaried” by Trump, and both are untouchable.

We don’t have to like Mitch McConnell even the slightest bit (and we don’t), but we can still be pleased he is ignoring Trump completely on policy issues and battling it out with him over candidates to try to win back the Senate in 2022. In several states, retiring Senators, McConnell or the Republican Senate Campaign Committee are courting candidates in direct opposition to Trump’s pick. What Democrats have daydreamed about is emerging - a Republican schism that works to their advantage.

In the fall there will be a deal among Democrats for a second budget reconciliation bill. Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema will eventually provide the necessary votes for significant new Biden-proposed expenditures on education and social welfare, which themselves were initially called “human infrastructure” because of the electoral magic of the term. There may be two more bipartisan compromises, focusing on competitiveness with China, and police practices.

And then we will be ready to see what the American people think about all of this. In part, the 2022 elections will be a referendum on Biden’s first year. The economy will remain strong due to the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure package. The pandemic will finally have been quelled, so voters will show that they like what they see. 

In the face of this good news Donald Trump’s plan is to make it all about Donald Trump, with continued exotic variations on the big lie, even though the Arizona Cyber Ninjas have not found any traces of bamboo. Mitch McConnell’s plan is to try to paint Democrats as out of control, though it is clear that his real grudge is that they are in control. Our collective plan is to keep the intensity of effort alive that took back the Senate, House and Presidency over a four-year period. We can move ourselves along nicely by doing these three things:

1) Combat the Sedition Caucus
	There needs to be consequences for the 137 House members and 7 Senators who voted to overturn the Pennsylvania election results on January 6. It is right to see them as the Sedition Caucus. It is fair and just to expect companies who make political contributions to move away from elected officials who are unwilling to uphold the Constitution. Pushed along by the Lincoln Project and the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Toyota has reversed its position and dried up its contributions to these members of Congress. It is time to expect Anheuser-Busch do the same. Write corporate vice president Daniel Keniry at Daniel.Keniry@anheuser-busch.com. Tell him that his company’s support for members of Congress who underpin the big lie is decreasing your taste for Michelob and Stella Artois.
2) Call Susan Collins Out of Order
	Susan Collins voted to convict Donald Trump for his role in making the insurrection. Subsequently, she fought in a losing cause to establish a bi-partisan commission to investigate all the events of January 6. One would think that the failure of her own caucus to step up would inhibit Senator Collins from attacking the Speaker of the House on her own efforts. It turns out Collins believes Pelosi was “partisan” in denying Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks seats on the investigative panel the House has commissioned. Susan Collins knows Jim Jordan, and knows that he denies that January 6 happened. Susan Collins understands exactly what happened, and it is shameful that she is playing these games. Tell her that is what you don’t like by calling her at 202-224-2523.
3) Expand Our Senate Majority One Senator at a Time
	It is amazing how much better it is to have 50 votes in the Senate rather than 48. As we all remember that outcome was only secured when the once unthinkable happened and Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock were elected in the January 5 Georgia runoff elections. Both of those victories were built from the ground up by tireless candidates who started early and never stopped. That is the kind of candidate Rep. Val Demings is. Her role as one of the managers of the Trump insurrection impeachment was stellar. She is articulate and principled and with your help will be the next Senator from Florida. Donate today if you can. Or make this a project going forward.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has announced that Donald Trump is meeting with his “cabinet” and is “ready to move forward in a real way.” These people are not going to vanish from the political scene if we are not as focused as they are bizarre.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington