Columnists say President Donald Trump’s focus on his own priorities, more than the country’s, is widening the split with Senate Republicans — cracking a coalition once seen as airtight and pushing the president toward lame duck status. Democrats see an opening as the midterms approach.
According to pollsters Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman in an op-ed at The Hill, one year ago, the “alliance between President Trump and congressional Republicans looked airtight” — but it is now “unraveling, as Republican senators increasingly spar with a president who they see as too focused on his own priorities at the expense of their reelection prospects.”
Schoen and Cooperman see this as “a tremendous gift to Democrats.”
For example, Trump is underwater on numerous key issues, including the economy, where he sits at just 35 percent approval.
Republicans had hoped to use a bipartisan housing bill that went to the president’s desk for his signature, but at the last moment Trump canceled the ceremony and refused to sign the legislation.
“The president wants to make it harder for you to vote rather than make it easier for you to live,” one political strategist said in a recent interview, Schoen and Cooperman noted. They added, “Holding up legislation to address affordability unless a White House ballroom is funded is hardly a winning message.”
Senate Republicans now have a problem: if they distance themselves from Trump, they may appeal to independents while angering Trump’s MAGA base. If they align themselves with Trump, they may lose independents.
The “tensions are expanding,” Schoen and Cooperman observe. Senate Majority Leader John Thune “has been increasingly vocal with his frustration over some of Trump’s recent moves.”
Not that all of this infighting hands Democrats an automatic win.
“All of this being said, whether or not Democrats can capitalize remains unknown. Their party’s favorability, at minus-20, is worse than Republicans’ minus-17, and even worse than Trump’s at minus-15,” Schoen and Cooperman note. “The growing power of an insurgent left wing may also complicate things for Democrats as Republicans work to portray the whole party as left-wing extremists.”
But the infighting does hand Democrats an opportunity to strengthen their position with the voting public.
“Unless the president reverses course,” Schoen and Cooperman warn, “which he is fully capable of doing, he will only speed up his descent into lame duck status and further undermine his own legacy.”