The GOP should heed this unlikely messenger — it warns of what's coming for them

It’s tempting to believethe Democrats are winning the shutdown fight. After all, if Marjorie Taylor Greene, she of Jewish space laser fame, is now the voice of reason, something is surely going their way.

Last week, the Georgia congresswoman tweeted that “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABSOLUTELY INSANE COST OF INSURANCE FOR AMERICANS,” after revealing that her adult kids are going to see their own Obamacare premiums increase by 100 percent.

Taylor Greene said: “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to [the House GOP conference] about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!”

The tide seems to be turning.

“How can you tell Democrats have the upper hand in the week-old shutdown fight?” said MSNBC anchor and columnist Catherine Rampell. “Marjorie Taylor Greene just endorsed their key demand.”

Indeed, others are putting the Democrats’ demand in a larger theory of political change. Symone Sanders Townsend, another MSNBC anchor and columnist, said the Democrats are winning because they are asking for something clearly defined in exchange for their support, not “some abstract principle or unreasonable demand.”

She added:

“Fighting is the only way to win. Progress is never handed over; it is wrestled into being. From the Civil Rights Movement to the labor movement, history tells us that those who wait patiently for justice are the ones left behind. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Democrats are demanding something concrete: health care security for the people they represent.”

I don’t see any reason to doubt the assertion that the Democrats are currently winning the fight over the government shutdown, as polling suggests broad agreement in blaming Donald Trump and the GOP.

I question the cause, though. The consensus among liberals and Democrats seems to be that a concrete “kitchen-table issue” like rising health insurance premiums is pushing public opinion and, therefore, forcing at least one highly influential House Republican to break ranks.

But what if it’s simpler than that?

What if public opinion is turning against the president and his party, because the shutdown has exposed something true about them?

Trump has acted like the Congress doesn’t matter, like the courts don’t matter, like the electorate doesn’t matter, like the law and the Constitution don’t matter. All the while, the Republicans have greased the skids of his impunity. That includes the Republicans on the Supreme Court. They occasionally legalized his crimes after the fact.

The president has been telling us for going on a decade that the Democrats are part of a vast, secret and malign conspiracy to destroy the country from the inside — the Democrats are now “the enemy within” same as “domestic terrorist organizations” — and that he is not only the solution to America’s problems but America’s retribution.

And for the last 10 months, the administration, the congressional Republicans and, to a large extent, the Washington press corps have been talking about Trump as if he were less a man than an act of God whose mandate by “real Americans” shall not be denied. The accumulated effect of all this effort has been turning the president into a tiger burning so brightly there’s no point in resisting him.

Yet, despite the hype, the government is shut. The Democrats revealed a tiger made of paper. And all it took was the simple act of saying no.

That’s a better explanation for polling that blames Trump. It’s not that the Democrats are making concrete demands. It’s that they’re fighting, period, using Obamacare subsidies as a credible pretext. They are forcing the president to step off, thus proving he’s neither invincible nor inevitable. Mostly, however, they’re proving he’s not what he seems, and the longer this fight goes on, the clearer that will get.

Even to Republican voters.

And that right there is the thing.

From the point of view of the congressional Republicans, there’s nothing wrong with health insurance premiums going up by two or three or four times. They don’t care, even if their own people are suffering. This is evidenced by Medicaid cuts. They will devastate GOP voters, over a decade, out of public view, giving the Republican enough time to devise a plan to prevent their people from knowing Trump and the Republicans have been scamming them the whole time.

What they do care about is the shutdown giving the Democrats a chance to link the pain that GOP voters are about to feel to Donald Trump. That risks them knowing that he’s the one hurting them, not the Democrats, as well as knowing that the Democrats are trying to help them. The Republicans don’t care about pain, only the lessons of pain.

The consensus right now seems to be that the Democrats are winning the shutdown, because Greene appears to be standing up to the president. (Politico is calling it her “populist rebellion.”) More likely, however, is that Greene is like the canary in the coal mine, an early warning to Trump that something bad is coming, and it’s coming fast, namely, that the Republican Party is about to experience what happens when GOP voters realize what they have done to themselves.

She suggested as much. Though she’s the first House Republican to endorse the Democratic side, she’s trying to shield Trump from the coming blowback.

“I'm actually putting the blame on the Speaker [Mike Johnson] and [Senate Majority] Leader [John] Thune,” she told CNN. “This should not be happening ... We control the House and Senate and have the White House."

The Democrats are winning, but not because they are sticking to economic issues that affect millions of Americans (including me, by the way). They are winning, because the consequence of their choice to fight has been to expose Trump’s weakness. He’s not what he seems.

Perhaps, the same goes for Greene. Though it’s a running joke that she’s suddenly the voice of reason, it’s rational for her to protect Trump. Among the worst things to happen to him and their party would be for GOP voters to learn the truth about them.