Some Leaders lead by respect and others by fear…..
Donald Trump leads the Republicans by the latter….
His wedge over Republican lawmakers, or more correctly his 2″ x 4″ is the party base…..Trump campaigned AGAINST Republican lawmakers in 2016….
While it is an oversimplification to look at Trump’s search for Chief of Staff as a overall indictment of Donald Trump’s relationship with his party and his mounting legal troubles.
It ISIn a party in which allegiance to Trump among many elected officials has long been based on fear and self-interest rather than any genuine liking, instructive…..
In a party in which allegiance to Trump among many elected officials has long been based on fear and self-interest rather than any genuine liking, this decision sends an alarming signal to Trump and his allies. After all, Ayers wasn’t in any sense an outsider. According to all reports, he had a good relationship with Trump, and with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who supported his promotion to Kelly’s job. If a figure this connected has decided to hop off the Trump train—or at least to move to a carriage farther back—how long will it be before other Republicans follow his lead?
Steve Bannon is warning that it might not take long at all. Over the weekend, the former Trump strategist told the Washington Post that 2019 would be a year of “siege warfare” for the White House, and he went on, “The president can’t trust the GOP to be there when it counts. . . . They don’t feel any sense of duty or responsibility to stand with Trump.”
Bannon isn’t a wholly reliable observer, of course. But, in this instance, what he said may well be true. Trump didn’t win over the Republican Party: he conquered it. And, over the weekend, in the wake of Mueller Friday, there was a notable shortage of senior Republicans coming to the President’s defense.
The task was largely left to Senator Rand Paul, a longtime critic of the Russia probe, and Chris Christie, an ally of the President. And even Christie, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the White House chief-of-staff job, wasn’t all that reassuring. Appearing on “ABC News This Week,” the former New Jersey governor, who also served for eight years as a federal prosecutor, conceded that if he were one of the President’s lawyers he would be concerned about the Southern District’s sentencing memorandum. “The language sounds very definite, and what I’d be concerned about is, what corroboration do they have?” he said.
Trump’s enduring strength, of course, is his support at the base of the G.O.P. In the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College Poll, which was carried out last week, before the release of the sentencing memos for Cohen and Paul Manafort, ninety per cent of self-identified Republicans said that they approve of the job the President is doing….
image…esquire