Forget Trump. McConnell and the Senate GOP Are on Trial.

[Zorro]

Biden won’t be played the way Obama was. The country’s needs are urgent and if McConnell doesn’t move soon to signal real cooperation from at least 10 Republicans, it’s game over.

The clock is ticking, and GOP leader Mitch McConnell has limited time to show he can act in good faith. President Obama squandered a year of his presidency courting Republican votes that McConnell made sure didn’t happen. President Biden won’t make that mistake. If McConnell pulls his old tricks of obstruction, Biden has moves of his own he can deploy.

It’s really rich that a man who pushed through over 200 judges and three Supremes with bare party-line majorities gets all huffy about Democrats pulling similar maneuvers when it suits them. Democratic leader Chuck Schumer got a temporary respite when the GOP leader withdrew his demand that Democrats keep a 60-vote threshold in place to pass legislation before he would agree to share power in the 50-50 senate.

The Senate itself is on trial. Republican senators are poised to hand a disgraced president a second chance to claim victory by failing to convict. The GOP’s dilemma deepened with the news that Trump’s latest lawyers have walked away after the client insisted that his defense focus on his absurd insistence that he actually won the election.

After a trial that is likely to deepen the partisan divide, can lawmakers act within a reasonable time, weeks not months, to deliver pandemic relief and economic assistance? Or will Republicans reflexively stall negotiations and genuflect before the god of deficit reduction? “The key here, you have to give them some rope and see whether they decide to hang themselves,” says John Lawrence, who served as Nancy Pelosi’s chief of staff during the Obama years. “If the past is any guide, they will build the scaffold.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/forget-trump-mitch-mcconnell-and-the-senate-gop-are-on-trial

[Blue Owl]

1. K&R