The Do Nothing, Know Nothing President (‘we love it’)

Trump doesn’t know nor does he act as if he understands what an executive order is and Republicans. ‘love it.’

Suddenly, Republicans have found a friend to help them stave off “Tea Party” colleagues from challenging their re-election in November.

Donald Trump’s executive “orders.”

If you prefer, a “memorandum outlining four distinct areas of action.” (1)

For Republicans facing re-election Saturday’s Bedminster side show couldn’t come at a better time. Ballot leader sinking poll numbers. Tea Partyites feeling vindicated as talk of stimulus bargaining tops 1 trillion. Corruption exposure lurking around the corner.

Welcome Saturday’s executive order barrage, designed to obfuscate the glaring issues of confronting the spread of COVID 19, the absence of a foreseeable economic recovery, and an unemployment plateau that won’t go away and which is putting people in harm’s way, physically and mentally.

But the other dimension, the electability of Republicans in November is what is particularly obscene. There is no “deal” between Democrat and Republican negotiators if Trump can paper the effort with know nothing do nothing “orders.”

Invoking Obama’s executive order resolving temporarily DACA’s “path to citizenship,” the White House is spinning Trump’s weekend escapade as a “workaround” the Congressional impasse. Sure, Obama used a pen, check. And signed his name on a piece of stationery, check. And held it up to the TV cameras, check. And this is where the resemblance stops.

Obama’s executive order was not a “workaround,” it was issued because Congress refused to resolve the legal rights of hundreds of thousands of immigrant families. Trump’s executive “orders,” by comparison, are flimflam. The consequence for Congress is that this institution has ceded legislative leverage to the Executive Branch.

And the Republicans ‘love it.’

August 10, 2020

(1) Robin Saks Frankel, Forbes, August 10