Matt Gaetz finally did the right thing for the country and – ironically, for all that is red. He withdrew. It allows Donald Trump a chance to make a better-considered nomination while also giving the Republican Senate a boost in preserving their considerable power over cabinet appointments. Now though, as the transition moves on with respect to nominations and more confirmation talk, the battle is heating up within the GOP over nothing less than the future role of the Senate in the nomination process. Trump knows it and the transition is sending out heated warnings. No resistance, or else.
Fittingly, as the nation braces for a new leader with authoritarian instincts, the issues going forward pit Constitutional branches against each other, both jealously fighting for their constitutionally-granted powers. The Founding Fathers’ biggest mistake was the failure to anticipate the overwhelming influence of party over politics. They had believed and wanted the fight to be over protecting their own positions. With the GOP in control of the Senate in the new year, the only thing standing in the way of an all-powerful executive branch is a GOP Senate trusted to maintain distributed authority.
To that end, President-elect Donald Trump is already sending out ominous warnings to the Senate with the threat of primaries funding by Elon Musk who is almost now seen as treasurer to MAGA:
Johathan Karl of ABC News reports:
But the Trump team will play hardball with Republicans who waiver on any of the president-elect’s nominees. “There’s votes coming,” one senior Trump advisor told me. “And if you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”
But the Trump team will play hardball with Republicans who waiver on any of the president-elect's nominees.
“There’s votes coming," one senior Trump advisor told me. "And if you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy…
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) November 20, 2024
“the Trump team will play hardball with Republicans who waiver [sic] on any of the president-elect’s nominees.”
That hardball envisions primaries against any Senator who “waivers” in their support. They point to Elon Musk as funding the campaigns. As Rawstory reports:
Journalist James Surowiecki warned, “Having one super-rich guy exercise massive influence over American politics is a very bad thing. I know Americans don’t really care about the nuts and bolts of democracy, but this is a true corruption of democracy.”
Jesse Lee, a former Biden White House National Economic Council senior adviser declared, “Oligarchy is here.”
Ironically, the Trump-MAGA-movement has a miserable record nominating U.S. Senators, one that has denied them a majority up until now. There is a reason that Pennsylvania and Georgia have Democratic Senators and it owes back to Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker – both Trump choices, both primary winners, and both general election losses – just two examples. To the extent that the Republicans look to primary fellow Republicans it has so far been self-defeating to the highest order. Republicans may not have liked previous choices against Oz and Walker, but they sure like them more than Democratic Sens. Fetterman and Raphael Warnock, both in place due to primaries.
So those are the stakes but on this one the Republican Senators are almost as powerful as Donald Trump with respect to their own jobs. Any who run in 2026 will be able to point back to 2020 and 2022 as losing primaries, lost seats resulting in lost majorities.
The GOP Senate elected John Thune as their leader, a Senator less than a partisan (Everything is relative). It is a message. They are not going to cede all power. The president doesn’t just get his own cabinet and that’s it. To the extent that the GOP preserves some oversight in new cabinet picks – look at Hegseth and Gabbard as the two new targets, it helps thwart some of the worst possible authoritarian abuses.
It is something. It may do nothing to alleviate your fury and depression but there is no rule that says it had to be this way. The GOP could’ve elected Rick Scott or another rubber stamp. They did not. It is something to watch, especially a battle that is already heating up.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak and enthusiastically on Blue Sky
Oh, boy, gotta just LOVE me that Elon. Such a good upstanding South African!
If it weren’t for the fact that Trump would simply bring him back, Biden ought to deport the Muskrat back to South Africa (not that the South African government would necessarily want him back). But to be rid of the Muskrat for even a month would be interesting (oh–and strip the Muskrat’s companies of their government contracts in the process since we can’t possibly have an “alien” in charge of US government business deals).
Well, I certainly understand the sentiment but I think South Africa would give anything to have him back. He throws money in any direction that might increase his personal power as a meglomaniac and thus becomes a useful genius idiot to anyone that can cora him.
Look for his money to influence everything in the near future while also running X into the ground, turning it into a new right-wing service, devaluing it in half as it was one of the few places that both sides congregated. No more, not really. So he will get used and he will use others.
But virtually no one in power would want to get rid of him after co-opted. Just to control Spacelink alone would be huge.
jason
Everyone is leaving Xitter and going to Bluesky.
Xitter is going to be just a slightly better funded Trump Social.
Amen.
For all the talk about Musk being a genius – and he is in some contexts (Space X and Starlink are impossible to ignore) he certainly has run X into the ground.
jason
And the magats are following. They don’t like 24/7/365 hate apparently. So they go to the other sites (this includes muskrat and tyrant) because it’s no fun at twit and lying social
If you want ANYTHING and can sweet talk the man into writing a check, (good luck with that), the wave of cash possible could change everything from the markets to the cost of gasoline and grocery’s … To be the wealthiest man, requires at least some common sense, but Elon is not wired that way, his jumps for joy at Trump’s rants show he is actually somewhat challenged by normalcy … What he wants to do, is what he does, the hidden agendas in his actions may be as big as our Universe …
Remember, Trump is fickle and easily influenced. He may get Musk to cause trouble in ’26, but after that is (may be) a new general election and Trump should be gone. By then Musk may have found a new pastime and changed his focus.
I’ve been wondering when Rump was going to nominate Herschel Walker to something.