In the run-up to Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration, as the so-called Department of Government Efficiency started assembling a team, a couple of progressive activists reached out to the advisory panel, looking to partner with the initiative.
The Trump transition team said it wasn’t interested. “[W]e have no room in our administration for Democrats,” a Trump spokesperson told The New York Times.
Given the circumstances, the response wasn’t too surprising. It was just a few months ago, for example, when the Republican referred to Americans he disagrees with as “the enemy within,” “dangerous” and “evil.” That said, even the most knee-jerk partisans usually maintain the pretense of open-mindedness, saying things like, “We’re open to good ideas from anyone, regardless of politics.”
Team Trump clearly isn’t bothering to keep up appearances. What’s more, as NBC News reported, the president’s GOP allies on Capitol Hill appear to be taking a similar approach.
Key Senate Republicans rejected a request by a group of moderate Democrats to jettison their party-line efforts on immigration and instead work on a bipartisan solution. The decision shows the GOP’s determination to go their own way on one of President Donald Trump’s top priorities, despite their wafer-thin House majority and other obstacles in the way of passing his agenda.
The Democratic outreach was itself notable. About a dozen Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, recently reached out to GOP leaders to make the case there was room for a bipartisan compromise on immigration. They knew this might hand the White House a political victory on a key issue, but these same senators already negotiated one bipartisan agreement on immigration and border policy — a deal Trump killed last year — and they were willing to work in good faith on another.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the new chair of the Senate Budget Committee, turned away the outstretched Democratic hand.
“On border security, no,” Graham told NBC News. Republican Sen. John Johnson of Wisconsin, when asked about the Democratic outreach, laughed out loud.
“If they want to secure the border, they could have done that,” he said, apparently forgetting that Democrats did back a bipartisan agreement on border security that Republicans walked away from. This isn’t a situation in which officials tried to reach a bipartisan deal but struggled to nail down the details, leading one party to go their own way. Rather, it’s one in which Republicans effectively said from the outset, “We want a partisan bill, not a bipartisan one.” In the recent past, the Obama and Biden administrations practically begged Republicans to sit down at the table — on practically every issue — to work on bipartisan solutions. But as Trump begins a second term, GOP officials clearly prefer a different approach. As for the legislative challenge of passing major legislation in the Senate where it’s become routine to need 60 votes on most bills, Republicans believe they can pass their immigration bill through the budget reconciliation process, which means the party would need a simple majority, not a 60-vote supermajority. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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