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In the early 1990s, Sen. Tom Daschle was preparing for his first one-on-one meeting with President Bill Clinton. He wasn’t altogether sure what to say, so the South Dakota Democrat turned to Sen. Robert Byrd for advice.
The West Virginian thought for a moment before telling Daschle, “You tell him you’re happy to work with him, but not for him.”
This, of course, is the traditional model in American governance. Presidents have always had partisan allies on Capitol Hill, but most lawmakers have also cared about their own powers and institutional authorities. Congress is a co-equal branch of government, and its members have long balked at the idea that they somehow work for the White House.
It’s a fact that too many Republicans appear to have forgotten. CNN reported this week, for example, on how one leading senator is approaching some of Donald Trump’s most contentious cabinet nominees.
Republican Sen. Michael Crapo, who will chair the Senate Finance Committee that will hold confirmation hearings for several positions, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, said he will accept whatever Trump wants. ‘No, I’ll let that be a decision that President Trump makes,’ he said when asked if he will insist on background checks performed by the FBI. ‘My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.’
It’s one thing for powerful senators to become effectively rubber-stamps for their party’s president; it’s something else when powerful senators admit that they’ve voluntarily become rubber-stamps for their party’s president.
What’s more, it’s not just Crapo. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville recently told Fox News that Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance will soon be “running the Senate.” The Alabaman added that, as far as he’s concerned, it’s not up to senators to “determine” whether Trump’s cabinet nominees have merit.
That’s the opposite of the lesson the coach-turned-politician should’ve learned from Civics 101.
Around the same time, Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas added in reference to the president-elect, “He’s got a mission statement, his mission and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it, all of it, every single word. ... If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch your heads. That’s it.”
The problem isn’t just that these GOP lawmakers appear indifferent to separation of powers and their own advise-and-consent role. The problem is made worse by the fact that Trump — to a degree without modern precedent — is trying to wrest control away from the legislative branch as part of an ugly power-grab.
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus recently published an important summary on this, highlighting the degree to which the president-elect is setting the stage for an “alarming takeover,” focused on “a vast, dangerous and unconstitutional expansion of presidential power.”
This agenda, Marcus added, “includes not just emasculating the Senate’s advice-and-consent role but also refusing to spend money that lawmakers have appropriated.”
It’s against this backdrop that senators like Crapo said, “My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support.”
The Post’s Aaron Blake said the comment put the Idaho Republican in Congress’ “fealty caucus,” and it seems that faction already has too many members.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.