The GOP’s YOLO Caucus Tentatively Pokes the Bear

  

We now understand that congressional Republicans are not happy, the poor dears.

As with everyone who has ever bought anything from Donald Trump, they have buyers’ remorse. Put another way, they sold their souls to Donald Trump, and got nothing from the sale. Trump screwed them on both the buy and sell sides.

That hasn’t stopped them from cravenly rubber-stamping anything the Dear Leader wishes, even when they hate the idea. They’ve gone along with the stupid wars, the grifty tariffs, the plummeting economy, the ballooning inflation, the crazy gas prices, the degrading of our arsenal, the looting of our treasury, and the sabotage of our traditional alliances. All of which was fine with them.

But it turns out the “Retribution Tour” was a bridge too far, even for the slavishly servile. Trump went out of his way to primary any Republican who ever crossed him, and a lot of long-time rubber stamps will now lose their seats as a result. This was not going down well to begin with, so when Trump openly dissed John Cornyn by endorsing Ken Paxton — a person even disgusting people find disgusting — something apparently snapped.

Say hello to the “YOLO caucus.” I had to look it up, but YOLO stands for “You Only Live Once,” which is how these “Revolting Republicans” are supposedly thinking.

The story goes like this: A Republican officeholder who has, in some way, offended Donald Trump gets primaried and loses to a Trump-backed candidate. That person then has the six months remaining in office to act according to, say, common sense or conscience or something. Trump couldn’t care less whether his fawning candidates can win a general election. All that matters is that his loyalists are on the ballot and sucking up appropriately.

Besides being short-sighted — Trump is driving the party over an electoral cliff — this is creating new enemies of outgoing Republican officeholders, who now have until November to throw any number of monkey wrenches into any number of Trump priorities. They seem especially perturbed by the ballroom and the stupefyingly corrupt slush fund, but the Epstein story is still available for bear-poking.

It takes a lot to supercede the Democrats-in-disarray narrative, which is so beloved of the mainstream media. But this new Republicans-in-revolt story has done just that, at least for this week.

What we’re finally seeing — at least nine months too late to save major pieces of the republic — is a number of congressional Republicans seemingly willing to poke the bear. This is not easy for them, as compromised as they are. Like the master con man he’s always been, Trump sucked them in, made them complicit in his crimes, then kept dragging them in deeper. How they failed to understand that Trump never reaches bottom — even after January 6 — will be for history to figure out.

But for now, they have nothing but ugly choices. Some will go all in with Trump, hoping he can actually pull off this fascist police state thing, which is looking quite half-assed at the moment. This would mean they’d be sliding ever deeper into transparent lunacy. It would also require a solemn commitment to election theft, with a good chance of prison if they can’t pull it off. As crazy as it sounds, this is a choice many of them will make.

But not all. Some will keep their heads down and hope they don’t get primaried, knowing that the November midterms will likely be a bloodbath. I’m guessing that most have already made the calculation of whether their seats are safe or not. Many are not, which is why they’re leaving office in record numbers. They all want to spend more time with their families, though it’s not clear how their families feel about that.

But the big story is the YOLOs, the small but significant number who, if their recent statements can be believed, want to go down swinging. They know that the voting margins in both houses of Congress are now razor-thin, and just a handful of angry Republicans can make a serious dent in Trump’s grift agenda. And they’re still in office for six more months.

So remember these names, not because they’re not despicable human beings, but because they’re the leading edge of a backlash against the monster who now jeopardizes their futures, not just ours.

We’ll start in the Senate. Bill Cassidy was just primaried in Louisiana, and he’s publicly pissed about it. Thom Tillis announced his retirement months ago, and has been voting against Trump ever since.

They join an amorphous but well-known group of what we might call Trump skeptics — they’re too chickenshit to be called enemies. Think Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, and, strangely, Mike Lee and Josh Hawley. There are other, lesser-known senators in the conversation as well — John Curtis (Utah) and Todd Young (Indiana). Their number might soon include Cornyn, even if he wins today’s primary against Paxton.

There are surely other GOP senators laying low, keeping their powder dry. John Thune, the Majority Leader, has not been the reliable rubber-stamp Trump would wish, having resisted a number of Trump’s demands, including that he eliminate the filibuster and fire the Senate parliamentarian. Thune is not in open rebellion, but he seems to be slow-walking Trump’s more idiotic impulses.

In the House, the headliner is Thomas Massie, who was a prime target for revenge. He was just primaried, and he will lose his seat in November, possibly to a Democrat. He’s been the main driver on the Epstein pushback, and a constant irritant to Trump. He’ll now have six months to get his own revenge, so we’ll see what he comes up with. Or what Trump’s thugs come up with to silence him.

There are other names — Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania), Don Bacon (Nebraska), Tom Barrett (Michigan) — and they’re already starting to make trouble. They’re forcing the issue on a war powers resolution, and stooge Speaker Mike Johnson had to kill a House vote when he realized he might lose it.

But the real story in the House is the number of lame ducks, Republicans who will not be seeking re-election. That number is not precise, but it seems to be approaching forty. A lot of these are in districts previously considered safe, though in a wave election safety is not assured. Beyond that, there won’t be an incumbent running for those seats, which makes Republicans even more vulnerable to Democrats cracking their gerrymanders.

To be sure, none of these GOP office holders can be trusted for one second, and in a fair world they’d be taken out with the garbage. All are liars. Many are thieves and scoundrels. Some are traitors.

But their interests are now diverging sharply from Trump’s, and they have little or nothing to lose. Best case, they’ll work actively to sabotage the saboteurs. Worst case, they’ll go back to sniveling servility, which is what we expect of them anyway.

It’s hard to take the YOLO caucus, or any Republican, seriously. But there’s a bear in need of serious poking, and they’re the only ones in a position to meaningfully poke.

So while I do encourage them to poke away, I am certainly prepared for disappointment.