By MARSHA MERCER
Democrats could not be happier House Republicans booted
Liz Cheney from her leadership role for daring to tell the truth about the 2020
election and Donald Trump.
“Republican Party = Party of Trump,” the Democratic
National Committee proclaims.
Republicans, meanwhile, celebrate “Biden’s gas
shortage” and claim he is creating another “Jimmy Carter economy.”
“BIDEN UNDER SIEGE,” Fox News shouted in an online
headline over another that read: “White House staggered by multiple crises from
gas shortage to overseas conflict and migrant surge.”
We’re living in a time of intense partisan schadenfreude,
the German word for taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. Each political
party is gloating over the other’s troubles.
That may be fun now, but who will be joyful after next
year’s midterm elections?
Historically, the party that occupies the White House
loses congressional seats at the midterm, and Republicans need to pick up only
five seats to retake the House. In the Senate, the 50-50 split means one Senate
race could shift control back to Republicans.
Republicans dumped Cheney as No. 3 in the party
leadership to demonstrate their allegiance to Trump. They are making a risky
bet that the former president will motivate more GOP voters than he does
Democrats and independents to vote against his favorite candidates.
Cheney was one of only 10 House Republicans who voted
to impeach Trump for his role inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Republicans want her to go away quietly but she plans
to run for re-election in Wyoming and remain a vocal critic of the Trumpy GOP.
“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former
president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” Cheney told
reporters.
Unfortunately, hers is likely to be a lonely path.
There simply are fewer and fewer Republicans with the guts to buck Trump. Her
voice may be drowned out by the Republican chorus claiming President Joe Biden is
corrupt and that he and his “radical socialists” are bent on ruining the
country.
But will voters buy the purely negative GOP message? Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell implicitly acknowledges Republicans have no
policy agenda.
“One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this
new administration,” said McConnell, who casts the midterm elections as a
referendum on Biden.
Democrats hope voters will credit their party and
Biden with the lessening of the COVID-19 pandemic, a return to nearly normal
life and a robust economy and will again reject Trump and his minions.
But those Democrats who are gloating about the GOP’s
embrace of Trump should remember their joy at his come-from-nowhere success as
a presidential candidate during the 2016 primary season.
At the time, many Democrats thought Hillary Clinton
would more easily beat Trump than Jeb Bush or almost any of the 16 other
Republican presidential hopefuls. Trump, of course, lost the popular vote but
triumphed in the Electoral College.
Two years after his surprising victory, there was a
backlash. Republicans lost 42 House seats in the 2018 midterm elections.
The 2022 midterms will be the first election after the
census and the redrawing of congressional maps, many by Republican-controlled state
legislatures, which can stack the deck in their favor.
In addition, many Republican state legislatures have
passed more restrictive voting laws supposedly to fix problems in the last
election. There still is no evidence of widespread voter fraud or
irregularities, and the changes will make it harder for some to vote.
Republicans, though, seem to want it both ways. “I don’t
think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I
think that’s all over with,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told
reporters Wednesday after a meeting with Biden in the Oval Office.
Hardly. Just a day earlier, Trump again said in a
statement the last election was “rigged and stolen from us.”
Meanwhile, Trump has moved to New Jersey for the
summer and is expected to attend a fundraising event May 22 for the Make
America Great Again Action super PAC. The reception and dinner will be at his Bedminster
golf club, where Politico reported, “The minimum price for entry is $250,000.”
Democrats should realize if Republicans regain control
of the House or Senate next year, Trump could be the one gloating as he launches
another bid for the White House.
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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