Siegel: From North Carolina.
Charen: From North Carolina. It includes Mitch McConnell, it includes several others, and they are making some pretty forthright statements. Thom Tillis, for example, said — regarding this slush fund that Trump proposes — he said, “I call it a payout pot for punks.” Now, that is the kind of language we haven’t heard. You’ve even had people like Senator Mitch McConnell saying: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.” Those are the kind of words you did not hear from most Republicans for the past 10 years. I’m not sure there’s going to be a legislative impact, but what we are getting now, with these newly freed YOLO Republicans, is insight into what they have been saying behind the scenes all this time. And any dose of honesty is healthy.
Dionne: You know, I think there are two issues here: One, to go where Mona left off, it is clear that there is more dissidence publicly now than there was even a month ago. I think his endorsement of Paxton and turning his back on Cornyn actually played a role in this, because Cornyn was very popular among his colleagues. He almost became the leader ——
Charen: And he raised a ton of money for them.
Dionne: Yeah. And so I think a lot of them took that badly. And so they become dissident. This slush fund is a step, or five steps or 100 steps, way too far, even for them. The war itself is starting to split Republicans, with some of the most hawkish Republicans, like Roger Wicker from Mississippi, who’s not known as somebody who’s going to run out there and attack Trump, making a very strong statement about the possibility of — he didn’t use the word “sellout,” but it was along those lines.
So you are seeing this dissidence. The magic number is three plus one. The question is, if these YOLOs vote together — YOLOs, a new term, I use it respectfully — if the three of them vote together, you know that puts a lot of pressure on is Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Susan Collins of Maine, who’s up for re-election, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Because they have been publicly dissident, but they could cast “no” votes up to now that had no actual effect on what was happening in the Senate. If these three vote no, then the Collins and Murkowski votes become very significant, because they are, in another sense — to pick up your earlier term — majority makers. They get them to 51. Now, I’m still skeptical that John Cornyn, who’s a party loyalist deep all the way down, is going to break as much as I think Cassidy and Tillis might, but we’ll see.
Charen: John Cornyn reminds me of that great novel “Darkness at Noon,” where this Communist is arrested by Joseph Stalin on trumped-up charges, and he knows he’s innocent, but after a while, he just comes to embrace that if the party has arrested him, he must be wrong. He must have done something to deserve it. And I had that vibe from Cornyn a little bit. Here he has been defeated by somebody that he himself described as a moral abomination, which Paxton is. We haven’t gone into that. We could.
