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Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
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7 May, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Trump lost and R's lost the Senate, yet R's near-universally conclude they need him. Why? They're not wrong exactly. Trump's leverage isn't so much his ability to grow the GOP, it's that he could *destroy* them if he wanted and not think twice about doing so. It always has been.
Graham is correct that Trump brings millions of people to the GOP who are loyal to him and him alone. He also repels millions more. What Graham is hinting at, but not saying is that Trump -- unique among R leaders -- is willing to tell his voters to stay home or go third party.
Trump's lack of loyalty to the GOP has been one of his biggest strengths since the start. Many in the party would have loved to expel him in 2015 when they feared he hurt the brand. But he was threatening to run as an Independent -- and they believed him. nbcnews.com/politics/2016-…
One of the most quoted phrases in politics is LBJ saying he'd rather have a rival inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in. That's not the issue for R's with Trump. He's going No. 1 in the tent. The choice is letting him do it or him going Samson on the tentpoles.
Trump's danger to the party if he goes rogue is *not* the same thing as Rs fearing primaries. Graham just won re-election, it's not an issue. He's a party man who thinks a lot about the GOP's overall health and his conclusion is Trump has his finger on the button to blow it up.

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More from @BenjySarlin

Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
5 May
If the formula they’re using is “Trump pushing his election lies creates a risk of violence” it’s hard to see how that condition ever goes away
If the main issue they have is that it’s “indefinite” and they’re revisiting it in six months, odds are he’s still talking about it nonstop, the party is purging more Cheneys over it, and we’re even closer to the next elections. Not exactly making it easy for them to reverse.
Reading the full Oversight Board report here and it really doesn’t leave much room for Trump to fix the problem as they define it. He’s not going to renounce his prior behavior or stop doing it in the future.
Read 4 tweets
Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
16 Apr
It’s a good jumping off point for discussion, which foreign citizens “imported en masse” in our history would they say were a mistake who tore at national unity
Theory of immigration in the America First caucus document implicates, among other groups, nearly all Asian Americans. Vast majority are immigrants or descendants of immigrants allowed in by the 1965 law. Without it, less than 1% of country would be Asian, per Pew Research. Image
The America First Caucus suggests a pause in immigration could help in "weeding out those
who could not or refused to abandon their old loyalties and plunge head-first into mainstream
American society."

"Weeding" is an interesting term. Which groups do they have in mind?
Read 4 tweets
Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
13 Apr
A selection of threads from public heath/vaccine/epidemiology people I follow
Read 12 tweets
Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
12 Apr
@JHWeissmann Yeah, the case isn't "McConnell didn't do anything," it's that there was a world where Trump might be forced into political exile right now while McConnell is restoring the party to his version. Instead trends Trump launched are arguably accelerating
@JHWeissmann But you also have to look at the other side of the ledger. 2009-2016 McConnellism also laid the groundwork for everything Biden is doing so far, ignoring GOP votes to try to pass gigantic bills that pay off every D constituency instead.
@JHWeissmann So if the result ends up: You empowered Donald Trump, who transformed the party into something antithetical to your version, and your bet to blockade Obama led to the biggest progressive legislative bonanza since LBJ, I think that's a pretty mixed bag here
Read 4 tweets
Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
22 Mar
One issue here is that what we're talking about when we talk about "border security" changed. The 2013 framework was about D's trading legalization for more patrol, fence, work checks. But today's debate is largely about asylum seekers, which was not a major concern at the time.
Before the first child migrant crisis, D's had a simple formula: Give R's any amount of money for border security, no matter how absurd, in exchange for path to citizenship. But walls and patrols don't address the current q, what do you do with people legally requesting to stay.
You do not have a right to cross the border illegally just to work, but you do have a legal right to go to the border and try to claim asylum. The answer to how to deal with that issue at every step of the way is far more complex and divisive.
Read 5 tweets
Benjy Sarlin Profile picture
16 Mar
One wrinkle of filibuster debate worth considering. One reason McConnell never budged on legislative filibuster is there weren't many GOP priorities that could get 50 votes. In fact, not many priorities, period. They didn't even use every reconciliation bill available. BUT...
...if Democrats were to ditch the filibuster, there would be ENORMOUS pressure on GOP from base to come up with a list of 50-vote bills and whip R votes, if only as punishment to D's. They could essentially invent the demand to pass these bills, if only as a lib owning exercise.
This doesn't necessarily happen without D's ditching the filibuster first. McConnell would just as soon avoid many of these issues. But you may have a Trumpier majority with new room to act on abortion w/ SCOTUS, to name on example, and the last moderate holdouts potentially gone
Read 4 tweets

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