Make them vote on it

Yesterday, the Trump regime released its budget proposal for FY 2021.

This $4.8 trillion monstrosity still manages to slash spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, in the name of "budgetary restraint". It's so bad that GOP Senate budget chair Mike Enzi won't even hold hearings on it. And, of course, House Democrats say it's dead on arrival.

Now all this is true. The Trump budget won't make it out of committee. Hell, it might not even make it into committee. But that's neither here nor there. The political calculus is simple: Make the House GOP vote on it.

The Senate GOP, as I wrote, is already scurrying away from it. They're already under threat of losing their majority in November. This abomination of a budget would seal the fates of the likes of Susan Collins and Cory Gardner. GOP leadership will do all it can to shield their vulnerable colleagues from having to take a stand on this proposal.

But that doesn't shield the House GOP. Although it's quite probably that Democrats will hold onto their majority come the elections, that's no reason to go easy on the Republicans. Bring the Trump budget to the floor as is. Force Republicans to vote on it.

It won't pass, so that's not a worry. But make "Steve" McCarthy's morons take a stance on this budget which balloons the deficit, balloons military spending, and slashes social spending. Make them—and by extension the entire Republican Party—vote to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security going into a general election.

Several things could happen. House Republicans could scoff at the vote as meaningless. Which, for Democrats, would be. But it wouldn't be so for Trump's moronic base. Any deviation from the party line would be met with fury and opprobrium.

If they vote against the budget, Trump will stick their heads on pikes. If they vote for the budget, Democrats will tar not just them, but the entire party. Or, they could vote "present" en masse, and prove yet again that they're nothing but cowards.

Trump felt a frisson of manhood when his Senate quislings acquitted him last week. But as with all things relating to him, the bloom soon fled the rose. He's back to where he always was: unpopular, unloved, and facing expulsion from the White House. Someone with any hint of political nous would have proposed a budget which promised all sorts of butter. Instead, he's gone all in on guns and only guns. This might give woodies to the humps who fill his Nuremberg rallies. But Mr. and Ms. Suburban Voter want their parents (and themselves) to have Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. Instead of appealing to these voters who abandoned the GOP in droves in 2018, he's doing nothing but alienating them further. It's almost as if—and hear me out—he's not some cunning political genius, but a moron filled with grievance and animus who is going to punish a country of which the majority wants nothing to do with him and his hateful ideology.

Nancy Pelosi, of course, has no need of my advice. She's been doing quite well without it. But if she were to ask, I'd say to her: Shove it down their throats until they choke on it. Make them own the natural result of Republican philosophy. And then sit back and smile.