,
14 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
This short news item demands comment. The Senate did not have to adjourn today. It could have voted on appropriations bills to reopen government agencies. Its Majority Leader decides he didn’t want that. So the Senate adjourned.
2. Now, had the Senate voted on whether to reopen government agencies, its Republican members might have supported their President, and kept the agencies shut down. Or they might have split, allowing appropriations to pass but giving the President an opportunity to veto them.
3. Enough Senate Republicans may even have voted to reopen government agencies that the President would need House Republicans to sustain a veto. Or Trump, who has never vetoed a bill, might have tweeted angrily from the East Wing and let the government reopen.
4. Those were the possibilities, had @senatemajldr thought reopening government agencies important enough to give up a weekend at home in Kentucky. He didn’t. But I don’t wish to be unfair. McConnell wanted more than just a couple of days off.
5. McConnell wanted to spare himself the awkwardness of a divided Republican caucus. He wanted to spare GOP Senators a hard vote — hard in the sense that it might have exposed them to the tweets of Trump if they voted to reopen agencies, & to public ridicule if they didn’t.
6. And McConnell wanted to support his master, the President. Trump feels strongly about non-white immigration. Non-white immigrants are disease to Trump; they’re rapists, bring drugs, and so forth. The wall is a tangible expression of that hostility. McConnell gets that.
7. So to spare himself, his caucus members, and his President political difficulties of various kinds, @senatemajldr adjourned the Senate, and scurried back to Kentucky. There’s symbolism in that, for me.
8. A few months ago I attracted a bit of attention on Twitter with a long thread explaining why I was leaving the Republican Party after some 40 years. (Summarized here, for those interested: )
9. There were several reasons for my decision. The most important involved responsibility for government, the purpose of politics & something the Republican Party has chosen to abandon. McConnell’s decision to run away with agencies shut down was what I’d have predicted he’d do.
10. Of course to McConnell this is all the Democrats’ fault. They threaten to divide his caucus, make his members take tough votes, and they won’t help him keep his President happy by giving him his wall. McConnell affects a tone of great bitterness about this.
11. What McConnell and his fellow Republican Senators won’t do is take any responsibility for the functioning of government agencies, now shut down because they didn’t timely pass appropriations bills last year when Republicans controlled both House & Senate.
12. Government employees not getting paid aren’t Senate Republicans’ responsibility. The air traffic system isn’t either. Nor are the national parks. Or the Coast Guard. The IRS? Nope. Federal cancer research or food safety inspections? No way. Not. Their. Problem.
13. McConnell’s Republican Senators take more responsibility for their weekly fundraising calls than they do for keeping the government running.
14. So McConnell adjourned the Senate, and fled the Capitol — a symbol of his party and the damage it is doing to American democracy by renouncing responsibility for government. Every Republican in the Senate fled with him, all to keep the President from tweeting at them. [end]
