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News Friday, Mar 15 2019

Snapshots from the GOP’s national emergency dumpster fire

Mar 15, 2019

In case you missed it– Yesterday 12 Republican Senators sided with Democrats to vote against President Trump’s fake national emergency. But five of the most vulnerable 2020 Senate Republicans put their constituents and their constitutional principles on the back burner in an attempt to preserve their political careers.

The verdict from across the country? Dumpster fire.

Roll Call: These GOP senators voted to potentially let Trump pull funds from military projects back home

  • “Some Republican senators who voted Thursday against terminating the President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration may face backlash for risking military projects in their home states.

Bloomberg (Opinion): The Dysfunctional Republican Party Strikes Again

  • “It seems likely that electoral incentives pushed McSally, Gardner and Tillis away from the center because Republicans politicians have learned to be more afraid of primary challenges and threats of withholding party resources for disloyalty than they are afraid of swing voters in their districts.”

The Denver Post: Editorial: Our endorsement of Cory Gardner was a mistake

  • Gardner has been too busy walking a political tight rope to be a leader. He has become precisely what we said in our endorsement he would not be: ‘a political time-server interested only in professional security.’”

Politico: ‘Beware the fury of Trump’: 2020 GOP senators back president on border

  • “‘Beware the fury of Trump,’ said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor, who added he thought Republican senators could have faced primary challenges for opposing Trump on the issue.

NC Policy Watch: Tillis flips back to Trump camp on national emergency

  • ‘I suspect that maybe some people had signaled that behavior like this may lead to being primaried,’ [Andrew Taylor, a political science professor at North Carolina State University] said. ‘He was in damage control.’”

TPM: Vulnerable 2020 Senate Republicans Stick With Trump On Border Declaration

  • “These Republican senators may have hurt themselves with the vote — but they decided it’s a bigger risk to cross Trump.”

Arizona Republic (Opinion): Did Sen. Martha McSally get scammed by the acting defense secretary?

  • “Sen. Martha McSally sold out military projects outside of Arizona by saying she struck a deal with the Trump administration to support the president’s emergency declaration on the border if Arizona projects were spared.”
  • “It didn’t quite sound that way at a hearing Wednesday in which Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan appeared before Senate Armed Services Committee, of which McSally is a member.”

Washington Post: Tillis’s reversal sums up state of Senate Republicans — few willing to cross Trump

  • “Tillis’s actions highlighted a hardening reality in Washington: Republicans who have real near-term political skin in the game are not willing to stand up to him.

CBC: Editorial: Sen. Tillis delivers flip-flop for the ages

  • “What Tillis says he believes and what he does are now revealed to be VERY different things – particularly when a re-election is on the line.”

Washington Examiner (Opinion): Pathetic Senate Republicans abandon principles by embracing Trump’s emergency declaration

  • Republicans who spent the Obama administration warning about the expansion of executive power on Thursday made fools of themselves by overwhelmingly backing President Trump’s emergency declaration in the name of building a border wall. In the process, they did long-term damage to the conservative cause.”

Published: Mar 15, 2019

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