President Donald Trump has a reputation for bending Republicans to his will, but a political scientist said Friday there's a quiet trick Republicans use to kill his priorities — without ever casting a vote against him.
In a New York Times conversation, Good Politics/Bad Politics writer Jonathan Bernstein laid out the strategy political scientist Matthew Glassman calls "negative agenda setting." If Republicans simply never bring something to a vote, it vanishes, and no one has to go on record opposing the president.
"As Trump's unpopularity among voters starts to really sink in, Senate Republicans seem to be more willing to go public," Bernstein said. "But there are still lots of things, from nominations to specific budget requests, that just disappear."
Trump has repeatedly demanded the Senate nuke the filibuster to ram through his SAVE Act voter restrictions — and Senate leadership has simply refused to move on it. His proposed $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund was stripped down after Senate Republicans balked, and even outgoing senators have admitted colleagues are deliberately sitting on the sidelines to avoid a public fight.
Bernstein argued that Trump makes it easy by not sweating the details. A more engaged president, he said, would fight for these items — or never propose doomed ones in the first place. Instead, they quietly die without a vote.
"If they never take an action on something, say a vote, poof, it’s gone," said John Guida, a Times Opinion editor.