Out of Office, Trump Won’t Matter Much. By Jonathan Bernstein

Out of Office, Trump Won’t Matter Much

Republicans are largely ignoring the president’s views as it is. Why would that change after January?

Out of Office, Trump Won’t Matter Much

Republicans are largely ignoring the president’s views as it is. Why would that change after January?

By

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December 9, 2020, 9:31 PM GMT+9

Don’t let the door hit you ...

Don’t let the door hit you ...

Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty

Don’t let the door hit you ...

Don’t let the door hit you ...

Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty

Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty

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Questions about President Donald Trump and the Republican Party just get more and more complicated. Take, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham’s comments about Trump’s future influence (via Ed Kilgore, who has a good item about it):

He has a lot of sway over the Republican Party. If he objects to anything Biden [does], it would be hard to get Republicans on board. If he blessed some kind of deal, it would be easier to get something done. In many ways, he’ll be a shadow president.

This seems intuitively correct at a time when scores of Republicans, including most of the party in Congress, seem to be afraid to admit that Trump lost the election. Sure, it’s also true that numerous Republicans in key positions of authority — judges, state and local officials, state legislators — stood up to Trump and refused to undermine democracy on his behalf. But it sure seems as though Trump dominates the party. And yet …

Congressional Republicans who won’t call Joe Biden the president-elect are nevertheless voting for a defense-authorization bill that Trump opposes, ignoring his veto threat. Republican senators may vote this week to overturn an arms sale Trump wants. The president’s nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board has been just as unsuccessful as his earlier unorthodox picks. Trump is almost entirely AWOL in negotiations over appropriations, and his preferences have been ignored in negotiating the coronavirus relief and stimulus bill. As for the pandemic itself, most Republican governors are now attempting to slow the spread and pushing for the use of masks. That’s not Trump’s policy.

In short: All these Republicans find it remarkably easy to defy Trump right now, while he’s still president, on most matters of public policy. Sure, many of them are on his side on the issues. But in most cases that’s because they were already there, often before he was.

The question is how all of this changes once Trump is out of office, assuming for now that he’ll remain politically active and highly visible (neither a sure thing). Graham’s assertion is telling. To begin with, it’s purely reactive: Trump will, Graham says, be able to keep Republicans from supporting Biden’s initiatives, not persuade Republicans to adopt his own policy agenda. But is there even much to what Graham does anticipate? Surely Republicans aren’t going to need Trump’s influence to oppose most of what Biden wants; they’ll do that both on substantive grounds and as part of the same rejectionist strategy they think was successful against Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

As for the other possibility, that Trump could endorse any major compromise: Really? Does anyone think that Trump will do that at all? The truth is, to the extent Trump has any influence within the party, he has mostly used to build personal loyalty to himself. It’s hard to imagine he’ll have any greater cause to fight for after he leaves the White House.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.