The Imperial Presidency, Part 2

[Labster]

Trump purged his Republican critics. Here's why he could soon regret it

TL;DR:

Since these Republicans no longer have major incentives to curry favour with Trump, but retain their seats for another seven months, they now have full freedom to defy him in Congress.

This is Politics 101: Don't piss off people whose support you need to advance your own agenda.

Wow, what a rose-glasses take from the CBC.  Republican senators who defy You-Know-Who have a lot left to lose, including their homes and their lives.  He expects absolute loyalty from his party, and they know it.  From the Bulwark:

Obsequiousness, it turns out, is a competitive sport.

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said “there is no room” in the Republican party to oppose Donald Trump. “This is the party of Donald Trump.”
That’s a pretty good entry in the sycophancy sweepstakes.

So what do you do if you’re Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.)? You’re a wealthy business executive serving your first term in the House. You’re proud that you graduated with a degree in government—magna cum laude—from Harvard, where you were also the chair of the undergraduate council student affairs committee. You went on to work at McKinsey, and then on to Harvard Business School, where you were named a Baker Scholar for academic achievement. You succeeded in the casino business. Now you’ve got yourself into Congress, and you have an eye on higher office. You’ve tried to distinguish yourself in your first term by your rampant anti-Muslim bigotry. But will that be enough?

So after the defeat two weeks ago of non-Trump-compliant state representatives in Indiana, and of pro-impeachment Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, and pro–releasing the Epstein files Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky, what’s there to do but to try not only to echo but to surpass Sen. Graham? So Fine tweeted, “This is @realDonaldTrump’s Republican Party. The rest of us get the privilege of living in it.”

See, this highly educated man gets it.  He has the privilege of living, for now.  This is why Republicans keep quitting the Congress in droves, because representatives in the majority have no agency or ability to accomplish their own goals.  If you have different goals than the party leader, there's nothing for you to do that doesn't lead to ruin, in one way or another.  People get threats at their homes now for being RINOs.  The President just made a demand that the Senate Parliamentarian be fired because of one wrong ruling.

I think this is why the CBC gets it so wrong, because they can't quite wrap it around their heads around the idea, because being part of a parliamentary majority always means you have some say, some power, and can maybe move up the ladder.  But in the U.S. Congress you can only move up in graft, never in power.  The reason that Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House is that they kicked out the guys who thought they could occasionally defy Trump, and he was the only one stupid enough to take the job.

And to drive home the fact that Congress doesn't matter, You-Know-Who sued his own government for $10 billion because a IRS contractor leaked his tax returns and all of the unfairness of that.  And then he ordered his own government to settle the lawsuit for $1.8 billion -- just billions on the penny -- to create an "anti-weaponization fund" to compensate victims of the government targeting people for political reasons.  The President gets full control over how the money is spent, and all recipients are secret.  The lawsuit was withdrawn before the settlement agreement was signed, so the judge has no authority to review it.

So first here, the President just unilaterally allocated nearly $2 billion without asking Congress for anything.  Indeed, it turns out that Congress was unnecessary all along for the power of the purse.  Sure, the Congress being required to allocate money is on that one paper, the Constitution, but why worry about that?  If that piece of paper says that Presidents can only serve two terms, why would that get get any different treatment?  It's just a piece of paper, and it's written in cursive, and who can even read that nowadays?  Besides, You-Know-Who already won his third term, since his second term was stolen by Biden, therefore the limit doesn't apply Q.E.D.

The second topic is related to the first.  Who is a victim of weaponization of the government -- indeed a class big enough to merit billions to be allocated?  All signs point to the victims of the January 6 attacks, those poor people forced into the Capitol building to Stop the Steal to try to kill Mike Pence.  They have all now been pardoned (though many have returned to prison on unrelated charges).  So why shouldn't they get a slice of the pie?  More guns for them, maybe?  A private army of loyalists, funded directly by the government.

The third is a footnote, a rider attached to the settlement agreement.  The Justice Department and IRS are “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from auditing or investigating the taxes of any of the President, his family, or their businesses.  The King of Great Britain, too, is immune from prosecution, but not his family.  Score one for the republic, giving civil rights out bigly.