GOP in disarray

The accepted truism among our media betters, which then filters to lily-livered liberals, is that Mitch McConnell is an evil genius who keeps a death grip on his caucus and is so much better at his job than Chuck Schumer and we need a Mitch in our caucus who will bring the GOP to its knees through force of will. I think we can lay that silliness to rest now.

Last night Democrats advanced the debt limit on a party line vote, 50-48. This wasn't the unexpected part. Schumer had requested that the GOP just get out of the way and agree to let Democrats do all the heavy lifting. Again, all they had to do was get out of the way.

Mitch refused, thinking he had the upper hand, and that he was so much better at playing hardball than poor old Charlie Brown Schumer.

But then a funny thing happened. McConnell suddenly learned that Schumer is not from podunk Paducah, but from Brooklyn, NY. And not the new Brooklyn filled with hipsters with ridiculous facial hair. No, he hails from a Brooklyn which is the Brooklyn of fame and fable. Sharp elbows are a must.

Not only did Schumer hold his caucus together, but, as the debt limit loomed, even began to gain momentum to carve out the debt limit from the filibuster. I can imagine Joe Manchin getting word to McConnell that if didn't give in, Democrats would do just that. And once you make one carve out, well then, the next one becomes easier.

McConnell suddenly realized he had been outplayed. The filibuster is more useful to him than to the Democrats. Only the lack of agreement among the caucus has prevented its nuking. And McConnell didn't want to start going down that road. So McConnell agreed to a deal where he would let Democrats raise the ceiling on their own, which had been their position to begin with.

Slight problem: The filibuster. McConnell made the deal, but he still had to overcome the filibuster. And up until the last minute, it seemed that he wouldn't be able to get those ten Republican votes to defeat it. It took him most of the day and into the late evening to corral the votes. There was a very real possibility that he would fail in keeping the deal which he brokered. I would have died of a ruptured spleen laughing from that.

In the end, the cloture vote scraped by, even getting one more vote than necessary. But what died last night was the myth of McConnell's political nous. Both parties are factionalized. But the Democratic factions, by and large, have the same ultimate goal. The GOP is now riven by those who swear loyalty to the exiled president, and those who wish he would just go away so that can return to their usual chicanery, but in a better, more pleasing package. McConnell, far from having an iron grip on his would-be kinglets, has lost the plot. And when this comes up again in December, he's lost all leverage. He's a general whose most of his army no longer believes in him. And the exiled president excoriated him for caving to the Democrats.

The GOP had a chance in 2015/2016 to repudiate the exiled president. They had a chance to say that he didn't represent Republican values. But they didn't, because that would have been a lie. Donald Trump was the GOP base's malice brought to life. The party elite would have found themselves without followers, and with no place in Republican politics, had they done that. The party would have splintered, and that wasn't something they wanted. They had some initial success, but soon it was obvious that their victory had turned to ash in their mouths. 

In the battle of who has more cojones, depend on the kid from Brooklyn over the chickenshit from Paducah. McConnell has gotten too big for his britches. He may as well retire and let Trump become minority leader. It would be far more honest for him to do so.