Without question, Donald Trump has upended politics, in his election and in his mode of operation since.
His election at one point seemed against the odds, but the American voter had something to say about that. And yes, I know all about the vote tally and the Electoral College and John Brummett's pleasure in referring to him as the second-place president. So what? He won according to the rules everyone knew about when the presidential campaign got underway.
He's made prognosticating about Washington, D.C., a challenging gig. On Friday, hours after Trump said he might veto Congress' $1.3 billion spending plan, conservatives across the country were frustrated when the president instead signed the measure. Trump said he had to sign it to provide for the nation's defense. But he also pledged to never again sign a bill like the one he had just signed.
Somehow, Trump appeared to believe that would mean something to his supporters.
I got the impression watching the president that he believes he can sell anything to his base, that they love him so much he can grab them by some body part any time he wants and they'll never complain. But conservatives on Friday afternoon appeared to feel the president had just assaulted them, gauging by conservative talk radio responses.
Host Michael Savage, who has claimed a good deal of responsibility for getting Trump elected, said the day was the worst in his 24-year career on the air because of Trump's decision to wallow in the swamp he'd pledged to drain. Rush Limbaugh called the spending bill a "nuclear win for the swamp over Donald Trump."
At another point, Limbaugh said "the Donald Trump agenda just got gutted."
Trump himself said there was a lot in the bill he was unhappy about, but he signed it because billions of dollars in spending for defense were a necessity for the security of the nation.
For a man who took every opportunity to suggest the presidency and handling of "the swamp" would be easy for him -- indeed, that he was the only one who could fix things -- Trump sounded more like a victim of D.C.'s marshy water than the man capable of getting things done.
Some of conservative America, which could not fathom a vote for Hillary Clinton, spent Friday wondering whether they had really gotten what Trump had promised them in the 2016 elections. They certainly got a conservative appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, and for some that will be enough.
Savage, however, spent part of his show Friday pondering whether conservatives might have been better off if Hillary Clinton had won. Why? Because, he suggested, if Clinton and the Democrats had put forward the spending plan signed Friday, the Republican party would have fought hard to defeat the measure.
Instead, the GOP sent a spending bill to Trump that was filled with measures people who voted for him were eager to see reduced or eliminated. For example, federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts goes up by $3 million despite Trump's opposition. There's no change in funding for PBS and National Public Radio. All of those are frequent targets by conservatives.
Will the reaction to Trump's cave-in on so many issues lead to changes in political leadership? Naturally, there are those predicting a massive defection to the Democrats in the mid-term elections, but I'm not betting the farm on that yet. Trump's base certainly aren't the ones who will shift.
Maybe I'm wrong, though. Trump may be incorrectly assessing that, because of who he is, he can do anything he wants to his conservative base.
He's made such assumptions before and it didn't end up hurting him.
Commentary on 03/26/2018