No juice

Created
Fri, 06/01/2023 - 09:06
Updated
Fri, 06/01/2023 - 09:06
As I have written before, Trump has never had as much juice with the congress as people said he did. After all, he had both the House and the Senate in his first two years and basically only got tax cuts for the rich done, which was the GOP’s Holy Grail. Everything else was just rescinding and withdrawing Obama’s policies and executive orders. They really don’t care about him now. After Kevin McCarthy failed to win enough votes to become House speaker on Tuesday, former President Donald J. Trump held a call with Mr. McCarthy and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, one of the key Republican members of Congress blocking Mr. McCarthy’s bid. Mr. Trump’s goal was to break the logjam. But if Mr. Trump had wanted Mr. Perry to quickly flip, it wasn’t to be: The next day, Mr. Perry voted against Mr. McCarthy three more times. Mr. McCarthy’s inability to corral enough votes this week has underscored the limits of Mr. Trump’s political potency inside a party that has not controlled the Senate since 2018, lost the White House in 2020 and failed, so far, to identify the next leader of their narrow majority in the House. Even if Mr. McCarthy is eventually successful, Mr. Trump has, once again, struggled in his role as his party’s kingmaker. His handpicked candidates failed to usher in the red wave Republicans had hoped for in the midterm elections in November. His attempt to install a new Republican leader in the Senate was…