The Trump-Republican facade begins to crack
Donald Trump and the Republican Congress have only been able to put up a united front when their interests have overlapped. For instance they were all in favor of a tax scam for their wealthy donors. And they were all in favor of replacing Antonin Scalia with Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, ensuring that financially corrupt rulings would continue, while leaving Roe v Wade unchanged. But now that Trump and the Republicans are faced with the question of whether to replace swing voter Anthony Kennedy with a conservative ideological extremist, the facade is beginning to crack.
Although none of the Republicans in Congress have demonstrated that they can be counted on to do what’s best for the American people, they’re not simply doing the most evil things they can think of. They’re each doing what they think is best for themselves. Donald Trump couldn’t care less about women’s rights, so he’s willing to nominate an extremist to keep his faux-Christian conservative base happy. Plenty of Republicans in Congress are in the same boat. But some GOP Senators are in an entirely different boat.
That’s why it wasn’t surprising to see Republican Senator Susan Collins announce today that she won’t vote for an anti-choice nominee. She’s from the moderate state of Maine, and she wants to win when she’s up for re-election in a few years. If she helps overturn Roe v Wade, she’ll be all but guaranteed to lose re-election in a state like hers. Senator Lisa Murkowski is from Alaska, a red state. But Alaska’s conservatism is somewhat unique, and Murkowski could face problems back home as well.
Whenever the names of the comparatively moderate Republican Senators come up in situations like this, members of the Resistance are tempted to say “I don’t trust them” and move on. But even if you can’t trust them to do the right thing, you can trust them to do whatever is in their own personal best interest. The key is to get people like Collins and Murkowski to understand that if they confirm Trump’s nominee, there will be an overwhelming effort to ensure that they lose reelection.
