Trump’s role in the MAGA movement is to get things done.
It is Back to Work Monday for most Americans. Just remember that evil never rests. This weekend, the news media turned its attention to Congress, where reporters hope Republicans will crater and collapse in a pile of MAGA mud.
Politico articulated the mood best:
Washington is geared up for a big debate over trillions of dollars in tax cuts. It’s going to be long, slow and messy.
As the utter chaos that erupted as lawmakers struggled to write a year-end bill to fund the government demonstrated, the GOP has a tenuous grip on the House. President-elect Donald Trump has a penchant for chaos.
Ah yes, chaos.
Chaos is allowing 11 million to 40 million illegal aliens invade our borders.
Chaos is suddenly surrendering Afghanistan and $8 billion in military gear to a foe we vanquished.
Chaos is wild-eyed spending that fueled the highest inflation in 40 years.
Chaos is releasing billions to Iran to finance terrorism against Israel.
Chaos is sending rookie Secret Service agents to protect an opponent and not being surprised when he is shot.
Chaos is abruptly changing nominees three months before the election.
Chaos is drunk-picking Walz as a running mate. Oh wait, she was sleep-deprived.
Did I leave something out? Well, I am sure readers will add in comments other examples of the many nightmares unleashed by the Biden administration. I mean, I haven’t gotten to the mass murderers released from death row.
The Politico story I quoted was another empty screed against tax cuts. In typical journalist fashion, it concentrated on the imaginary cost of cutting taxes, completely forgetting the Laffer Curve:
Perhaps the biggest, hardest, and so far unanswered question is how much to spend.
Deficit concerns are running hot in the House, where many Republicans say a tax bill ought to be completely paid for. That’s anathema to party heavyweights like House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), not least because it would be extremely difficult to find enough offsets to cover the projected $4 trillion cost.
DC already rakes in record taxes and then borrows $3 trillion a year more to spend, spend and spend on bicycle lanes, polar bear studies and foreign wars.
The press never once asked where the money was going to come from when FJB began writing off $1.6 trillion in student loans—subsidies for the Higher Ed Industry that now runs the Democrat Party.
That the press has it out for Trump and his Republican friends in Congress is nothing new.
The New York Times gloated, “Johnson’s Reward for Keeping His Gavel: An Impossible Job Delivering for Trump.
“Speaker Mike Johnson narrowly avoided a painful and prolonged fight to keep his post, but his messy victory showed how difficult his job will be in the new all-Republican Congress.”
The same thing happened to Obama 16 years ago. It took more than a year to herd all his party’s cats into one bag called Obamacare—despite having a filibuster-proof Senate and a huge majority in the House.
Speaker Johnson has a tough job? Try being a lineman in a blizzard.
To its credit, the NYT story quoted Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida, who said: “I never said any of the other things that we’re going to do are going to be easy; they’re actually going to be very hard.
“But we have to do it for the American people. The American people expect us to get things accomplished, and I think that’s going be the driving force. Every once in a while, we’re going to take a hard vote.”
That’s how adults think and act. They realize not everyone agrees on everything or even anything. Their reasons are not necessarily evil or ignorant or unAmerican. Disagreement is normal. You talk things over and compromise.
In our house, we call it marriage.
This nation’s government was built on compromise. The Constitution is a list of compromises. The Senate is a compromise. The Electoral College is a compromise. Counting slaves as only three-fifths of a person was a compromise. All 13 colonies had slaves at the time.
Even the Bill of Rights was a compromise as the promise was made to enumerate rights after the states ratified the basic Constitution. Our Founding Fathers kept their promises. They had to. Patrick Henry was among those who opposed the Constitution. Without him, the Constitution was dead because, as he said, give me liberty or give me death.
Trump will be the Compromiser-in-Chief as he works with legislators this time to get what the American people want most. He got Paul Ryan to pass the tax cuts in 2018. He will once again teach Washington The Art of the Deal.
The media was all set for a slugfest on Friday.
Level-headed Republicans denied them such a carny show. As CNN reported:
With two Republican lawmakers standing between Mike Johnson and the speaker’s gavel, President-elect Donald Trump picked up the phone.
From the golf course Friday afternoon, he spoke to Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas and convinced them to ultimately fall in line behind Johnson.
Without a vote to spare, the Louisiana Republican won his bid to retain the gavel and lead a narrowly divided chamber into the new year. While the official record will state he secured the necessary 218 votes on the first try, the drama unfolded with far less certainty and demanded Trump’s intervention until the very end. The first vote of the 119th Congress underscored the president-elect’s hold over the Republican Party—and the challenge he faces keeping it together over the next two years ahead of the 2026 midterms, which could threaten the GOP’s Washington trifecta.
Trump, according to two sources familiar with the pitch, argued that Republicans needed to work as a team and warned that voters would have very little tolerance for the dysfunction that would ensue if Republicans could not unite behind a speaker.
Trump’s role in the MAGA movement is to get things done. He knows the only way to do that is to give a little to get a lot. He’s a Rolling Stones fan but he did not pick Satisfaction as his theme. He went with You Can’t Always Get What You Want.
Two polls today.
It will be same old s**t show. Dems will be lock-step united and there will be those couple of RINO's holding on for dear life to the to good old days before MAGA... and Chuckie Schumer will end up with the big smile -- same as he always does. Don't think the SWAMP is going to cede power this easily. And BTW, compromise to DC is increasing the national debt by $3.1 trillion instead of $3.5 trillion.
missing from the #2 poll, Bill Barr. Two words...The Big Lie