Nicolle Wallace explains why Republicans 'don't have a strong hand' to play against Biden
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace explained that Republicans in the House and Senate don't have any options available to them because they've spent four years caving into President Donald Trump for some of the most horrific things said and done in history. Whatever President-elect Joe Biden has planned won't come close to controversies and if Republicans try to take down Biden, Americans aren't likely to buy it.
Biden has said that he intends to operate differently from Trump did and doesn't intend to use the politics of personal attacks as a negotiating strategy.
In his press conference Tuesday, Biden said that he celebrated the stimulus bill passed by Congress, but that it was a far cry from what Americans need.
"What is the Biden philosophy on working with Republicans to get more?" Wallace asked her panel. "I mean, I think Republicans did more than they sent out to do and that they wanted to do in this legislation. State officials say it is way short of what they need, and Biden makes the right political point. The people that are hurting don't really don't belong to one political party or the other. Is the public support part of the Biden legislative strategy?"
Washington Post reporter Matt Viser said that Biden is working to push Americans to contact their senators to tell them why more funding is needed to make it after this pandemic.
Wallace argued that there's something Biden understands better than Republicans seem to.
"They don't have the power," she began. "They don't stand for anything. So, any argument they launch, and you saw this play out in a superficial way about an insult lobbed at them, the word use. They were going to defend a president who talked about bleep-hole nations and grabbing women and -- they have don't have any principled stands with which to defy and block and obstruct Biden. So, if Biden can turn the sentiment in the direction that he wants to govern, I don't think the Republicans have a strong hand to play on principle. And you have some reporting on the Defense Protection Act around the production of the vaccine. There doesn't seem to be a national principled policy objection to that or have you turned up something that could be a roadblock at least politically if Biden moves in that direction?"
NBC News reporter Heidi Przybyla agreed, saying that there was certainly truth to what Wallace argued, but that Republicans still look at Trump's voters and see 70 million who supported him.
Their problem, however, is that they wouldn't even deliver for President Trump while he was in office. She remembered how "Transportation Week" became a joke in Washington because the Trump White House would announce they had a transportation package and the Democrats agreed to it, but the Senate refused the bill. If Biden joined forces with Trump to pass the transportation package he always wanted and agreed to name it after him, it would certainly put Republicans in an awkward position.
Even with 70 million supporters of Trump, that doesn't mean that they also support the GOP-led Senate. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has already been celebrating the end of Trump's era, saying that he was happy no one would ask him to defend the president anymore. But if Republicans want those 70 million Trump voters, they might have to do exactly that.
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