How did we get to this point where so many legislators do not legislate, where legislators do not make laws? Why come to Washington if not to govern?
I witnessed the evolution of the filibuster among Republicans in Congress in the post-Reagan years. Successful legislation requires compromise, and the more right-wing Republicans (and their voters) become, the less compromising they are.
Donald Trump only intensified the dynamic. As president, he talked a lot about bipartisan agreements with Congress on gun limits, infrastructure, health care and immigration, and he didn't deliver on any of them, leaving the White House with enough material for a new book: “The Art of No Deal.” Like Time Magazine reported Early in his term on Trump's negotiating style, “time and time again, the president has proven to be an unreliable partner.”
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Unfortunately, even out of office, Trump continues to practice his black arts against make deals, exploiting cowardly Republicans' fear of him and his supporters.
Trump's immediate rejection of a bipartisan Senate on Monday border security commitment (“horrific,” pronounced) was the apparent coup de grace for the first significant immigration bill in years. Trump sycophants in the House preemptively testified the invoice DOA. I may not get there; Sycophant senators are casting doubt on even Senate approval.
Forget those However, for now they are Republicans. Instead, let's recognize a brave Republican profile: Senator James Lankford.
The formerly obscure Oklahoman has braved not-so-friendly fire from the right for months as he negotiated the immigration compromise with Democratic Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and advisers to President Biden, who blessed the final product. Now, with Republican attacks redoubling, Lankford is standing his ground and taking on Trump. (It certainly helps that Lankford was elected to a second term in 2022 and won't face his voters again until 2028.)
Lankford is a rarity in Congress, a Republican willing to work with Democrats to try to solve the problems Americans want, rather than endlessly campaigning on them. The few such Republicans (Sen. Todd Young of Indiana is another) should get credit where credit is due. They certainly aren't getting it from his party: the Oklahoma party censured Lankford for his efforts last month, before rescind his action.
Constructive Republicans were the rule in Congress when I started covering the place. That was mainly before the advent of social media, right-wing wires, and grievance-infused populism. Now, too many members of Congress count clicks and wires, not hard-won laws, as measures of success.
Senate Republicans “used to be divided between conservatives and moderates. Now it's split between invertebrates and vertebrates,” said Luke Albee, a former Senate aide who worked for two Democratic senators who were always looking for principled conservatives willing to compromise. “Senators like Lankford… are in the vertebrate camp, even though they are clearly on the endangered species list.”
Few congressional observers expected this leadership from Lankford, and even fewer on immigration, easily one of the country's most divisive issues and one that Republicans hope will be the undoing of Biden and other Democrats in November.
Lankford, a lanky 55-year-old man whose The preferred drink is ice cold skimmed milk., has a bass voice befitting the Southern Baptist preacher he used to be, but otherwise projects a youthful character reminiscent of the red-haired Opie from the first fictional Mayberry television series. He is not a RINO. Lankford meets all the requirements of the Republican litmus test: pro-guns and fossil fuels, anti-taxes, anti-abortion and anti-gay rights. On January 6, 2021, he was among the objectors of the 2020 election before the riot, but ultimately voted to certify Biden's election.
Lankford has been omnipresent in the media lately, imperturbably rejecting what he calls Republican “falsehoods,” such as the claim that the border compromise would allow 5,000 immigrants into the country daily. He describes the provisions on asylum, detention, deportation, border security funding and presidential authority to close borders as a once unthinkable victory for conservatives. The bill omits, as Republicans prefer, past Democratic priorities: permanent legal status for DACA recipients and a path to citizenship for long-time law-abiding unauthorized immigrants.
But Lankford's Republican colleagues focus on politics, not policy, and he knows it. He characterized the thinking of many of them on CNN: “We're in a presidential year, so let's not help Biden in the process.”
Among his enemies are the usual knee-jerk detractors of the Senate, including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. Lee epitomizes the modern Republican Party's disdain for bipartisan legislation: He came to Congress in 2011 as a Tea Party insurgent who had unseated a widely respected Republican. The sin of the headline? Reach a deal with Democrats on the hot-button issue of the time: health care.
Lee's surprise victory shook the party's incumbents and heralded the replacement of pragmatic Republicans with uncompromising Republicans. Like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and JD Vance of Ohio. Now that ilk defines the party in Congress.
That's why so many Republicans are lying about a border security bill they initially demanded and why on Wednesday they will likely deprive the deal of the 60 Senate votes needed to proceed, taking with it the accompanying aid for Ukraine and Israel.
If that's not the death of government, it's close. If only we could have more Lankford and less Lee.
