Republicans in Congress are using fake "outrage" to try to bait Democrats into political infighting that could doom President Joe Biden's agenda, according to Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent.
Sargent warns that if Democrats take the bait, it will be "political suicide" and result in "catastrophe."
Several Republicans recently threatened to pull their support for a bipartisan infrastructure package because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is demanding that the Senate first pass a budget reconciliation bill that contains many of Biden's other spending priorities, Sargent notes. But Republicans are "ludicrously" manufacturing outrage over Pelosi's strategy, threatening to pull their support for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Sargent says there is "zero basis" for the outrage, noting that Republicans already "threw a fit" after Biden said he would not sign the bipartisan infrastructure package without the reconciliation bill. After Biden backed off his pledge slightly, Republicans said they were satisfied.
"Plainly, Republicans are trying to bait Democrats into infighting that scuttles their agenda, which would be political suicide," he writes. "Democrats want to act on the agenda that won them the White House and control of Congress? Outrageous!"
The real goal for Republicans, Sargent writes, is to defeat the reconciliation bill — which he says would be "transformative." — by convincing moderate Democrats that the bipartisan package is enough, or spooking them into abandoning the party's strategy.
"(Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell has openly declared his greatest objective is to ensure Biden fails. So it's pretty clear that the outrage over the Democratic approach is about creating a pretext to potentially accomplish that end," Sargent writes.
"This is exactly why Democrats can't take the bait Republicans have laid out. They can't lapse into infighting that dooms their whole project," he adds. "The bottom line is that the reconciliation bill is the Biden agenda. Democrats can't let Republicans break their unity. Failing here would be a catastrophe."
