In “The Godfather Part III,” Michael Corleone tells his nephew, “Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.” Corleone’s wisdom is on full display watching the Democrats’ fog-bound performance in the recent budget Continuing Resolution (CR) fight.
Why do politicians never learn Corleone’s lesson? It’s fine to get all emotional in public, and Democrats excel at this. But behind closed doors, where stratagem is decided and decisions are made, unchecked emotion produces disaster. Fortunately for the Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) limited the damage, but just barely.
The fundamental reality regarding the CR was always that if the Republicans played it simple and straight, agreeing to fund the government at Biden administration levels through the end of the year, then Democrats would be trapped. After much internal wrangling among Republicans, President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson performed a minor miracle getting a mostly “clean” CR through the House.
This hardly seemed a win for many Republicans who were looking for substantial spending cuts. But another kind of win occurs when you achieve the minimum and your opposition self-inflicts a major defeat. On this score, Republicans got their big W.
Reality check: When you have no cards, fold them early. Though few Democrats yet grasp this fact, in the CR battle they held one small deuce. That deuce was to show independents and moderates that Democrats could still behave like the adults in the room. Had they supported the clean CR from the outset, the Democrats’ adulthood would have been affirmed and the Republicans’ win would have been minor.
But no! Democrats, having brought themselves to a fevered pitch, attacked the CR as though the short-term alternative, a government shutdown, would have better served their purpose.
True, a shutdown would have appeased the rabid left-wing base, but only temporarily. As Schumer observed in an interview, “Three weeks from now [had Democrats forced a shutdown] the very same people who are very upset that we’re not shutting down the government would come to us and say ‘Why’d you let them shut down the government and cut SNAP, food stamps for kids’…and we would have no recourse.” No recourse, that is, but to support the CR they previously opposed, tails tucked tightly between their legs.
Schumer saved Democrats from their worst tendencies, including those of his weak sister counterpart in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, but yet he still bears some of the blame for their defeat.
Once House Republicans passed the CR, the battle’s focal point became whether Democrats would support a Senate filibuster. For weeks, and increasingly in recent days, Schumer implied he favored the filibuster, thus blocking the CR and producing the shutdown.
If he was just bluffing against the cards an emboldened Trump held, then Schumer was a fool. That seems unlikely. More likely is that only at the last minute did Schumer piece the cloud of anger to realize he had been leading Democrats toward a political abyss.
As Schumer observed, a leader has “to see beyond the curve.” He did, at the very last minute, though he left a lot of paint on the guardrail. Usually Schumer sees far beyond the curve. He didn’t, this time, and so bolstered the Republican win and weakened his position as leader.
Republicans should feel very good about the win, but they can’t get cocky. This was the warmup, like Spring training baseball. The World Series will be when they pass their “big, beautiful bill” of spending cuts and tax extenders and cuts. Keeping Democrats irrationally agitated will help put another big, beautiful W on the board. No doubt, Trump can barely wait.
JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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