re: Steve Scalise proves once and for all he is part of the swamp

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What they love is "owning" the Democrats and then creating scapegoats like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who actually got things done on behalf of Trump but fell out of favor when they would not get on their knees to service him.

McConnell only got Trump EVERYTHING he and the MAGA conservatives said they wanted.

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To date, not one major piece of legislation has been taken up that ideologically reflects Trumpism rather than Republican orthodoxy. Congress has not considered immigration restrictions. It hasn’t taken up any protectionist trade legislation. No infrastructure package has moved in either chamber. The one major trade bill Congress did consider was the Russia sanctions bill that reduced the president’s discretion, which Trump opposed.

In the realm of appropriations, Congress has not only ignored Trump’s agenda, but has repeatedly rejected it wholesale. The president’s FY2017 and FY2018 budget requests, both of which called for deep cuts in non-defense discretionary spending, were declared dead on arrival by GOP members. The FY2018 omnibus contained massive increases in non-defense discretionary spending. What wasn’t funded in one of the largest discretionary spending bills in history? Trump’s oft-demanded border wall.

This is one reason that you shouldn’t put much stock in all those vote studies that show congressional Republicans voting with Trump at very high rates. Such studies assume the president is setting the agenda, and that congressional Republicans are choosing whether or not to support the president’s position. But with the agenda being set by congressional leaders and the administration having unusually little influence over the substance of legislation, it makes more sense to view such correlations as Trump’s adopting the Republican position.

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