Republicans are sabotaging themselves to humor Trump's grievances: analysis

New York Times columnists Michelle Cottle, Jamelle Bouie and James French could not fathom the disconnect between Republicans who watching their fortunes sink in November and their fealty to the man determined to sink them.

The argument on Saturday touched upon the puzzling determination of House and Senate GOP to press for the unpassable SAVE Act — and their willingness to deep-six other legislation in a bid to support it for the favor of President Donald Trump.

“This is Trump’s obsession,” said Bouie. “… [Trump] is still incredibly bitter about the 2020 election. He still complains about not winning the popular vote in the 2016 election. It’s like a fundamental injury to his ego that he has lost an election and he blames everything but himself. And so, it’s his personal obsession. And the Republican Party, as it exists, has built itself around satisfying this guy’s ego demands. … [T]he muscle of opposing the president on one of his priorities is just something they’ve never exercised.”

But by pursuing the unpopular act, which could prevent many young people and women from voting, they’re going to “waste floor time on the Senate” with other bills waiting and a war underway.

“They might want to eat up floor time talking about that, debating that, dealing with legislation with that. But the president wants it and he is pouting and holding his breath, and stomping his feet. And so, they’re going to humor him,” Bouie said.

Cottle said she lives in D.C. and feels the compulsion to “just go down and stand on the Capitol steps, waiting for the Republican lawmakers to come through and just start screaming: ‘He’s not on the ballot, he’s not going to pay for this. But you guys are really risking getting your b---- thumped this year.’

“[Trump] can get away with things, even when he is on the ballot, that this team cannot — his team does not do that well when they are answering for what he has been doing,” said Cottle. “Everything we’re looking at with the midterms suggests that they are in trouble, and he’s not making it better. I mean, a war in Iran is definitely not what people signed up for, much less all of this weird conspiracy mongering and clinging to 2020.”

“The generic ballot right now for Republicans is devastating,” said Bouie. “The Democrats are up plus eight, plus nine of the generic ballot. Even if the Iran war was not causing a global energy spike, the cost of energy going up, it would be an anchor on the president, on the Republican Party. … [I]t could be a total collapse. And I do not understand — I just cannot get into the psychology of a Republican lawmaker who looks at the objective political conditions of this year and says to themselves, ‘I’m going to hug the president even closer.’ It makes no sense.”

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