Senate GOP Could Check Trump

In work­ing to get his agenda passed through Con­gress, Pres­id­ent-elect Trump faces an in­con­veni­ent real­ity: Re­pub­lic­ans will hold just 52 seats in the Sen­ate (as­sum­ing they win a Decem­ber run­off in Louisi­ana), their nar­row­est ma­jor­ity in the up­per cham­ber since George W. Bush’s first term. This means in­di­vidu­al GOP sen­at­ors could block or delay Pres­id­ent Trump’s ap­point­ments and policies.

Dur­ing the pres­id­en­tial cam­paign, many GOP sen­at­ors needed to stay on Trump’s good side to win elec­tion. But the polit­ic­al lever­age shifts dur­ing the next two years. Only eight Re­pub­lic­an sen­at­ors, com­pared to 25 Demo­crats, are up for reelec­tion in 2018, a re­mark­ably low level of ex­pos­ure. Most now have the polit­ic­al space to stand on prin­ciple, rather than hav­ing to toe the GOP line out of elect­or­al ne­ces­sity. Trump will need every vote he can muster from a Re­pub­lic­an Party that has been not­ably frac­tious over the past dec­ade.

The big ques­tion, then, is: Will Re­pub­lic­ans flaunt their in­de­pend­ence in a Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, scut­tling un­qual­i­fied Cab­in­et picks and re­ject­ing policies they deem ill-ad­vised? Or will they act more like Harry Re­id’s Sen­ate Demo­crats dur­ing the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, largely vot­ing in lock­step to sup­port the pres­id­ent’s agenda, even when his pro­pos­als lacked pub­lic sup­port?

There are clear signs that Re­pub­lic­ans are already feel­ing their oats. Sen. Rand Paul pub­licly an­nounced that he wouldn’t sup­port Trump loy­al­ist Rudy Gi­uliani or hawk­ish John Bolton as sec­ret­ary of State, single-handedly scut­tling the odds of the two early front-run­ners for the plum po­s­i­tion. Sens. Or­rin Hatch and Lind­sey Gra­ham have been out­spoken in their op­pos­i­tion to killing the fili­buster even though it would be in their party’s short-term in­terest to do so. “I’m one of the biggest ad­voc­ates of the fili­buster. It’s the only way to pro­tect the minor­ity, and we’ve been in the minor­ity a lot more than we’ve been in the ma­jor­ity,” Hatch told The Huff­ing­ton Post.

A sig­ni­fic­ant con­tin­gent of Re­pub­lic­ans will mon­it­or the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­la­tion­ship with Mo­scow to en­sure that the party’s mus­cu­lar for­eign policy to­ward Rus­sia and oth­er un­friendly coun­tries re­mains in­tact. Sen. Ted Cruz will keep a sharp eye on Trump’s Su­preme Court pick and raise an un­holy ruck­us if the pres­id­ent fails to nom­in­ate a con­ser­vat­ive jur­ist. Paul, who is sure to be a thorn in the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s side, will have enorm­ous lever­age when the party needs a uni­fied caucus to get le­gis­la­tion passed. Fisc­al hawks will take a hard-eyed look at Trump’s big-tick­et pro­pos­als.

In light of that, Trump’s se­lec­tion of Elaine Chao as Trans­port­a­tion sec­ret­ary was a canny polit­ic­al move. His ex­pens­ive in­fra­struc­ture plan could run in­to a wall of GOP op­pos­i­tion. But by pick­ing Mitch Mc­Con­nell’s wife to head the de­part­ment re­spons­ible for al­loc­at­ing in­fra­struc­ture funds, Trump would put the ma­jor­ity lead­er in an un­com­fort­able po­s­i­tion if he cries foul. As Gra­ham put it: “Christ­mas at the Mc­Con­nell house­hold sure will be in­ter­est­ing.”

In any event, it’s na­ive to ex­pect Re­pub­lic­ans to auto­mat­ic­ally do Pres­id­ent Trump’s bid­ding. The polit­ic­al paths to vic­tory for Trump and Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans were a lot dif­fer­ent. Trump set Re­pub­lic­an re­cords for sup­port in white work­ing-class areas across the coun­try, par­tic­u­larly in the Mid­w­est. He ran ahead of GOP Sen­ate can­did­ates in these strong­holds.

However, in the af­flu­ent sub­urbs, Trump per­formed poorly. Sen. Pat Toomey ran 6 points ahead of Trump in the Phil­adelphia sub­urbs, while Sen. Ron John­son ran 8 points ahead in the pivotal Mil­wau­kee sub­urb of Wauke­sha County. Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Hu­man Ser­vices De­part­ment, Rep. Tom Price, rep­res­en­ted a sub­urb­an At­lanta dis­trict that gave Mitt Rom­ney 61 per­cent of the vote in 2012. Trump barely won with just 48 per­cent.

These af­flu­ent, typ­ic­ally Re­pub­lic­an voters won’t be look­ing for trade wars with China or crack­downs on im­mig­ra­tion. They’ll be provid­ing Re­pub­lic­an sen­at­ors with the polit­ic­al sup­port to chal­lenge Trump when he di­verges from the tra­di­tion­al con­ser­vat­ive con­sensus. Trump will have his own ar­sen­al at his dis­pos­al—a bully with a pul­pit, a Twit­ter fol­low­ing of more than 16 mil­lion, and his own base of loy­al sup­port­ers—but he also is saddled with his­tor­ic­ally high neg­at­ives for a pres­id­ent-elect.

Demo­crats, mean­while, need to dis­tin­guish between when Trump picks un­qual­i­fied nom­in­ees and pur­sues un­pop­u­lar le­gis­la­tion and when he simply does things that any con­ser­vat­ive-minded pres­id­ent would do. It’s telling that many lib­er­als loathe Mike Pence, a prin­cipled so­cial con­ser­vat­ive, as much as they dis­like Trump. They’re re­serving as much an­ger for school-choice ad­voc­ates (such as Betsy De­Vos) and Obama­care op­pon­ents (such as Price) as they are for ap­pointees with checkered his­tor­ies. If Demo­crats keep their powder dry for mo­ments when Trump over­reaches, they may find they’ll have some al­li­ances of con­veni­ence across the aisle.