The Senate's emergency vote showed Trump's enduring strength

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate joined the House in passing a resolution disapproving President Trump’s Emergency Declaration to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The resolution—H.J. Res. 46—faces certain veto from the president, which will not be overridden; the House fell 45 votes short and the Senate fell eight votes short of a veto-proof majority. Although many, including my colleague Elaine Kamarck, see this as a striking rebuke for President Trump from several of his own partisans in Congress, there are multiple silver linings for the president.

First, Mr. Trump won in his battle with Congress over his emergency declaration. Opponents of the declaration could not convince Republicans to cross the aisle and vote for the resolution (and against the emergency) in sufficient enough numbers to override the veto. This sustains the emergency and will be more evidence for the courts that the political processes have been exercised and while Congress had the opportunity to cancel the emergency, it did not.

Second, Mr. Trump showed the strength of his position and the power of his popularity within the party. Although the president has endured historically low approval ratings during his first 26 months in office, he remains extraordinarily popular among Republicans. A recent Gallup poll shows Mr. Trump with a 39-percent approval rating nationally, but a 90-percent approval rating among Republicans. And even though Mr. Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency remains unpopular with the general public (61 percent oppose it according to NPR/PBS polling from February), fully 85 percent of Republicans support the declaration. This has put Republicans in a difficult position over wall construction and the emergency declaration: oppose the popular leader of the party and fellow Republicans, or oppose the will of the general public? In that battle, President Trump emerged victorious and Congressional Republicans voted with their base.

Third, the Congress telegraphed a very clear message to Mr. Trump: if Democrats talk about impeachment, worry not; you’re not going anywhere. Over the past few months, my colleague Elaine Kamarck has been head-counting the several pieces of legislation that have been (rightly) viewed as a rebuke of the president. Rebukes include: the vote on Russian sanctions, the failure to repeal Obamacare, reactions to the Putin summit, and withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Syria. They have provided interesting insight into which Republicans are willing to vote against the president, how many of them there are, and when they are willing to take that step. However, I argue too much stock is put into that headcount. Let’s zoom out a little bit to understand why.

The decision to vote to convict a president in an impeachment trial is among the most monumental decisions a senator could take—especially a senator from that president’s party. A sufficient number has never been amassed to remove a president from office. (Although, if Richard Nixon had not resigned from office, his removal was all but certain.) Such a move would be ultimate defiance of a president and the partisans in the electorate who support him. Senate Republicans showed us yesterday that they could not even muster a two-thirds majority to condemn a wildly unpopular presidential directive. If those Senators could not muster the will to slap Mr. Trump on the wrist, why should we think they would hand him the presidential politics version of a death sentence?

The reality is that the president is far too popular to be removed from office, and Senate Republicans recognize that their political future is tied to Mr. Trump’s. As I have written elsewhere, right before Richard Nixon’s resignation, his approval dropped to slightly under 50 percent among GOP voters. Mr. Trump is quite far from that threshold. And what’s more, Mr. Nixon did his party a favor and exited gracefully from the presidency, ensuring that those 42 Republican senators were not forced to cast a vote that may have been right for the country but anger half of the party’s voters. We have no idea how Senate Republicans would have fared in future elections had they voted to remove the president.

One then has to wonder: in a similar situation, would Mr. Trump bow out gracefully or hold his party’s feet to the fire? And facing a standoff with voters in their own party, would these senators roll the dice and stick with the president? I would assume the latter—no matter the other headcounts.

I spent all day on Capitol Hill yesterday. While I go there fairly often, after the vote yesterday, I really felt like I needed a hot shower, only to learn that one wasn’t enough.

I am so pissed off that, this morning, I sent slightly modified versions of the following to the “Dirty Dozen” Republican senators who voted against border security:

Senator (Name),

I cannot begin to express just how utterly disappointed I was to learn that you joined 11 other senators in voting against border security for the United States. I lived in the Southwest for ten years and three of my children live there today. I can attest to the fact that the situation along the border is far, far worse than it ever was when I lived in Arizona and New Mexico. But then, you know that.

I have supported your positions on key issues the vast majority of the time, but this vote was the most egregious violation of the trust of the American people I can possibly imagine. We finally have a president who is willing to staunch the flow of illegal aliens, drugs, white slavers and their ilk into the United States and you and your contemporaries cannot find the intestinal fortitude to vote with him. It’s been said that, “Democrats will not vote against a Democrat president, but Republicans will vote against a Republican.” I would re-phase to, “Neither Democrats or Republicans will vote against a Democrat president, but Republicans will vote against a Republican, especially one who is willing to do what is best for the United States of America.” I am utterly ashamed to call myself a Republican.

I cannot recall Republicans in the House or the Senate successfully opposing even one major policy initiative of the Obama administration, yet you have successfully thwarted President Trump on major policies - for which he was elected - on more than one occasion in slightly more than two years in office. With control of both houses of Congress, you could not muster sufficient support for the president that We The People elected to finally secure the US-Mexico border. I don’t recall this level of outcry when Obama, after proclaiming that he didn’t have the authority to unilaterally implement DACA, did so anyway. As you well know, Congress passed and President Ford signed the National Emergencies Act into law in 1976. It has been used over 50 times since and not once has Congress overturned a presidential declaration of an emergency.

Save me your platitudes on the constitutionality of the NEA. Your predecessors passed the NEA. If you had questions about its infringement on the separation of powers, why wasn’t the NEA repealed? I have long maintained that our representatives in Congress no longer represent those of us who elected them; that they represent the paymasters who fund their campaigns - and now we know who you are, at least on the Republican side of the aisle. Although I do not live in (state), you may rest assured that I will support primary challenges to your seat in the Senate for as long as I remain on this earth.

I highly recommend that each of us copy this awesome letter that was sent to the human waste that inhabit the Senate and who profess to be Republicans. Send a copy of this letter to your email list(s) and ask them to do the same.

These traitors in “our” Senate can no longer claim to support our national security and they certainly cannot profess that they support the American people. Were these schmucks blind and deaf every time Our Donald held huge rallies all over the USA? These schmucks think all the chants of “build the wall” were not representative of the wishes of the American people? Did they not see the families of those murdered by illegals plead for something to be done?

Each of these two-faced, spineless, gutless, worthless Senators have American blood on their hands because they refuse to stop the invasion at our border and stop the drugs being smuggled into our country. Rand Paul’s worthless excuses don’t fly with me. How about you?

Let’s help Our Donald expose, fumigate, and drain the Swamp! Scrub and clean the filth out; both parties.

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