Caffeinated Politics

The conservative-leaning Chicago Tribune editorial board (a truly worthwhile daily use of time with solid writing and sharp ideas to balance a day’s input of viewpoints) opined today the feckless Republican Party is simply unable to find its spine and slap down Donald Trump.

Trump also campaigned heavily on tackling inflation and the cost of living, all of which had worsened during the Biden years and in our post-COVID world. His dismal track record can clearly be seen by voters: we just paid more than $5 a gallon for gas in the city, groceries remain eye-wateringly expensive and 30-year mortgage rates are now above 7%.

The Republican majority not only presided over all of this, but failed to do anything serious to intervene. Anyone who did was not afforded any kind of hearing; on the contrary, they were kicked to the curb.

So much for freedom of expression. The result is a Republican Congress increasingly unwilling to exercise its own judgment, or its own constitutional authority, when doing so means crossing the president. Congress was never intended to serve as a rubber stamp, it was meant to legislate as a body independent from the presidency.

Forget Trump, Republicans. Stand on principle.

A candidate who can’t acknowledge, for example, that the president’s recklessness when it comes to tariffs has been harmful to the American people is no true fiscal conservative.

Nor is a candidate who thinks you can cut taxes and increase spending. Nor is a Republican candidate with no commitment to limited government, even when the Republican Party is in power.

Not for the first time does this blog harken back to the Constitution’s foundation, relying on the principle of institutional balance, a system designed so that ambition counteracts ambition. James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”  At its heart, he is explaining how to build a stable government that protects citizens’ liberty, even though human beings are naturally flawed and driven by self-interest.

As the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board pointedly argues, a Republican Congress abdicates its core duty when it surrenders its co-equal status to function as a rubber stamp for Trump. The constitutional role of the legislative branch is not to serve as an echo chamber for the executive or to cede its power of the purse and oversight responsibilities. But that is exactly what has happened with this current Congress. When lawmakers place partisan loyalty above their duty to check executive overreach, they diminish the legislature’s standing and weaken the fundamental balance that protects democratic accountability.

I strongly suspect that voters, though they don’t think about him every day, will act like James Madison on election day this November.