Censure

The tornado that is Donald Trump, as a candidate, could have just as easily been the Democrats nominee as the GOP nominee, and might very well have been had it not been for Barack Obama, and the high profile war between the two regarding Obama's birthplace and then the White House Correspondents Dinner. That sealed the deal that Trump would be a Republican.

I write this only to illustrate how the GOP Member of Congress, not to mention the public, owe President Trump no loyalty.  I think that Republicans were happy when Trump won in 2016 to embarrass the Democrats--and Hillary Clinton--as badly as they did, and I think that the GOP elite figured with unified party government, and since they had all the experience, they would be the ones leading the inexperienced Trump by the nose.  But that of course didn't happen.  Because just as Trump is no Republican, he also is not one to be lead by the nose.

Thus the question we have all been wondering is when will the Republicans break with President Trump, Party of One?  The first month or so of the administration, the Republican Congress hoped the President would act in unison to put their stamp on the country having suffered through the Obama years.  And it was bad from the start. 

First, Trump assumed that running the presidency was the same as running your business, where you can order people to do whatever you want and they do it, and when you can run a line of bullshit and no one notices.  And he assumed the GOP in Congress were nothing more than board members where he was CEO.

Second, Trump assumed that communications worked the same as when he was CEO of Trump, Inc. As CEO of Trump Inc., he worked the press with bombastic statements, because any press coverage was good for the business.  But the last 30 years of the rhetorical presidency has told us that the communications works best when the entire presidency speaks with only one voice, and the president is used sparingly only when necessary. In a normal presidency, the Office of Communications would be working 24/7 to manage the president's image and message.  But Donald Trump knows best.  He didn't get around to appointing a director of communications until a little over a month ago, and prefers to run his own communications irrespective of what the OC does or does not want to do.  Thus you have surrogates out one day saying one thing, and along come the president later on to step right on top of whatever message you had, regardless of how stupid it makes your surrogates appear.

Thus the president has burned the GOP in Congress on healthcare version 1, he proposed a one page tax reform bill, managed to get healthcare version 2 passed by the barest of margins in the House (which runs strictly on majority rule), and then held a victory party featuring a photo of a bunch of smiling, old white men.

All the while, Trump's public approval has gone from bad to worse, finishing lower than any modern president. He has no legislative accomplishments aside from his Supreme Court confirmation win.  He has started his 2020 re-election campaign just days following his inauguration. He brought representatives from Historical Black Colleges and Universities for a photo op to the White House to signal his continuing support (an event marred by Conway's theatrics on the couch in the White House), and then turned around and rejected further funding in his first signing statement.  And to make up the difference in the lack of legislative accomplishments, Trump has decided to hold signing ceremonies for executive orders--which are supposed to be issued with the least amount of public attention possible.  Oh, and just to add to the intrigue, the president fired the FBI director, after blowing him a kiss just a couple of days after inauguration, because his Justice Department recommended he be cut loose for his mishandling the Clinton email episode last year--an episode that candidate Trump wildly applauded when it happened.  Thus the reason was already dubious, when for some inexplicable reason the White House allowed Trump to sit down for an interview with Lester Holt of NBC, where Trump said he was going to fire Comey anyway, and that he had spoke to Comey at least three times where in one of those conversations, Trump suggested a quid pro quo regarding a Russian-connection-investigation and Comey staying on as FBI Director.

And all the while the Republican brand is growing toxic, like the Edsel or Enron.

So why do Republicans continue to support Trump?  They already have strategic retirements in advance of 2018, and it is clear that the life boat in the midterms is not the president.  At some point they need to put distance between themselves and the president or figure out a way to get the president to begin to act like a Republican for the benefit of the team.  That is assuming they want to continue to control Congress.

And if they want to get the president's attention while also protecting the brand, they should use a powerful tool that the Congress possesses--no, not impeachment. Impeachment is a atom bomb where you're not sure about the after effects.  Instead, the Republicans should fire a powerful warning shot across the bow of President Trump and formally censure him for lying to Congress, to his surrogates, and to the American public.  And better yet, it connects Trump with his favorite president, President Andrew Jackson, who was formally censured by the Congress (Senate) as a result of his long standing war on Bank of the United States.

A censure is a formal rebuke that represents a black mark for all of history.  And when the Senate censured Jackson, it drove him absolutely bonkers. The chief sponsor of the censure--Henry Clay--was the one person Jackson said he wished he could have shot because of the censure.

And unlike impeachment, censure can revoked at a later day--say when the president gets the message that he cannot do whatever he wants to do without consequences?

For the Republican Congress, the censure represents the path to walking the razors edge--checking the president without throwing in with the Democrats.  And given the historical severity of the action, it should be a powerful weapon to getting this president's attention, and letting him know that the ball is in his court, and his move is the next.  Maybe that will focus Trump's attention so he turns off the TV, hands over his Twitter account, and begins to make good on all those promises to the American voter that he made during the 2016 campaign?