Overtaken By Events

Trump has been moving with astonishing speed since the weekend to seize the initiative over the border. The best indicator is Joe's speech at the YouTube link above, where he struggles to control his slurring while wearing an ill-fitting suit -- note how the back of the jacket collar stands out from his neck. This is the sort of thing Dr Jill, if nobody else, should be on top of. Is he losing weight?

(I've got to say again that his slurring and his clear efforts to control it by deliberately slowing down, for instance around 0:20, are a recognized symptom of alcohol-impaired speech and suggest his blood alcohol count is somewhere well above 0.0, despite his repeated claims never to have had a drink. What time does he get started in the morning?)

The reason for Joe's sudden appearance was clear:

When asked Tuesday morning about whether any Senate Republicans would vote in favor of advancing the bill, Senate Minority Whip John Thune responded: "I think it’s unlikely because I just think our members are still — they want more time to evaluate it."

Thune also said that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is "rushing it" by pushing for a vote to be held Wednesday on whether the bill should proceed.

From other reports,

Chaos has erupted among Senate Republicans debating a sweeping bipartisan border bill so much that screaming could be heard from behind closed doors. This according to from Fox News Capitol Hill reporter Aishah Hasnie, who also reported that even one of the bill’s co-authors, Republican James Lankford, is likely to vote against his own bill in the interest of party unity.

Senate Republicans find themselves in a bit of a sticky situation as House GOP has followed the direction of former President Donald Trump — who is motivated by not giving President Joe Biden a significant win during an election year — and more moderate conservatives (like the editorial board Wall Street Journal) who are calling on passing generational legislation to secure the border.

Joe summed up his problem in yesterday's speech:

“Now, all indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said during a public address on Tuesday.

He claimed that Trump thinks the bill is “bad for him politically,” and, therefore, it is being opposed by Republicans in the House and Senate.

. . . “It’s time for Republicans in Congress to show courage, to show spine, to make it clear to the American people that you work for them, not for anyone else."

As I surmised in yesterday's post, the Senate Repubican moderates are terrified of appearing to go against Trump on the biggest issue so far of this year's campaign, and both McConnell and Thune have had to give them a graceful way out of their previous support for the bill. Joe is entirely correct, the Republican moderates are terrified -- the problem is that he and his advisers were expecting them to be terrified of him, not Trump. This is how David Axelrod, who'd previously been mildly critical of Joe, viewed the state of play over the weekend:

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Inside Politics,” CNN Senior Political Commentator and former Obama Adviser David Axelrod stated that President Joe Biden has shifted positions on immigration because Democrats have moved on the issue because busing migrants to sanctuary cities “has been very effective” in getting Democrats to flip.

. . . Axelrod responded, “Yes. Two points on this: Whatever you think about what Gov. Abbott (R) has done, it was diabolically clever, because by shipping these migrants to cities that call themselves…sanctuary cities, he has created issue[s]. . . . And suddenly, Democrats are engaged in this issue in a different way than they had been. So, that has been very effective. I think that the President has responded by engaging in these very difficult negotiations. . . . And now, what we see is Donald Trump telling his people, don’t agree to that. I don’t want Biden’s name on the bottom of that bill. That will help him.

Axelrod had read the way this was going to go, at least if the Democrats were smart, but Joe let events get ahead of him, and yesterday's speech was a belated recognition that he'd been outplayed, as had Republican leader McConnell:

Republicans in the Senate are expected Wednesday to reject the deal, and McConnell's critics are slamming him for how he has handled the legislation. Tuesday, several of them held a press conference, where Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, demanded that McConnell step down from his party leadership position.

Meanwhile, with former President Donald Trump leading in the GOP primary and potentially returning to the White House next year, McConnell may find it harder to hold onto his leadership spot.

Trump, whose opposition to the border deal has reportedly led to its opposition from Republican lawmakers, has often called for McConnell to be ousted, including after the senator criticized Trump in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol violence.

This has prompted McConnell's critics to speak out more publicly against him over the bill.

Trump's effective nomination with only token resistance has, again, put him in a much stronger position than he had in either 2016 or 2020, and on the border crisis, he's controlling the agenda not only in the House, where Republicans have a very slim majority, but in the Senate, where they're in a minority. Yet without a majority -- and indeed, without necessarily evan a majority of Republicans -- he was able to defeat McConnell's bill. This has got to be a sobering development for McConnell.

Yesterday I speculated that Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel had been told to resign by the end of the month. Later in the day, it looked like she did exactly that:

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has told former President Donald Trump that she will step down from her post later this month, soon after the South Carolina primary.

Trump, 77, is expected to back North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley as McDaniel’s replacement after the Palmetto State’s Feb. 24 primary, sources told the Associated Press Tuesday.

The former president and GOP primary front-runner hinted on Monday that McDaniel, 50, should vacate her position after the RNC reported decade-low fundraising numbers entering the presidential election year.

One down, one to go. Trump is a phenomenon, it's unwise to underrate him.