Unless Team Trump gets back to the basics of the 2016 election, 1974 could return.
.. Impeachment, though, is not the goal of Donald Trump’s opponents. They want to cut off his power—his hold on much of the American public. To do that, they need to make him look like a loser... The Trump opposition—Democrats, unions, Never Trumpers—now know that if they can turn three Republican senators against him, he won’t matter... Let’s talk about the swamp.If we have learned anything about the Trump presidency, it is that Mr. Trump and his chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, despise the Washington swamp, which includes the city’s lobbyists, all of its bureaucrats, every member of the media, the entire congressional delegation and their staffs.. Comedians are now the Democratic Party’s brain trust.
.. Forgotten now is that Nixon didn’t resign because of anything proven by the anonymous torrent, but only after he saw he’d lost the support of his own party in Congress.
House Fires at Ethics and Shoots Self
Mr. Trump’s response was something altogether different. He didn’t condemn these Republicans for defying and undermining his drain-the-swamp pledge. He asked them to address more urgent business first, like destroying health care reform and passing tax cuts for the rich. Indeed, while he was tweeting on Tuesday morning, Kellyanne Conway, the incoming counselor to the president, had already been on television supporting Mr. Goodlatte and his gang, saying House Republicans had a “mandate” to curb “overzealousness” over ethics.
The Wrong People to Drain the Swamp
Regrettably, the names being bandied about for high-profile roles in his administration — Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani — do not inspire confidence that such hopeful change is upon us.
These three relentlessly ambitious politicians, far from signaling something new and inspiring, represent a petty, vengeful past.
.. It was also surprising that Mr. Gingrich, of all messengers, came forth from the Trump inner sanctum on Wednesday to promise that the new administration would enforce “dramatically tougher ethics reforms.” As speaker, Mr. Gingrich had his own run-in with ethics standards in 1997 when the full House voted 395 to 28 to fine him $300,000 and reprimand him for using tax-exempt money to promote Republican goals and giving a committee untrue information.
Trump Campaigned Against Lobbyists, but Now They’re on His Transition Team
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.
Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.
.. Mr. Trump was swept to power in large part by white working-class voters who responded to his vow to restore the voices of forgotten people, ones drowned out by big business and Wall Street. But in his transition to power, some of the most prominent voices will be those of advisers who come from the same industries for which they are being asked to help set the regulatory groundwork.
.. “This whole idea that he was an outsider and going to destroy the political establishment and drain the swamp were the lines of a con man, and guess what — he is being exposed as just that,” said Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush before becoming a speechwriter for George W. Bush.
.. But in other areas, most notably the energy sector, the transition team advisers are far from independent.
Mr. Catanzaro’s client list is a who’s who of major corporate players — such as the Hess Corporation and Devon Energy — that have tried to challenge the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies on issues such as how much methane gas can be released at oil and gas drilling sites, lobbying disclosure reports show.
.. David Malpass, the former chief economist at Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, is overseeing the “economic issues” portfolio of the transition
.. Mr. Eisenach, as a telecom industry consultant, has worked to help major cellular companies fight back against regulations proposed by the F.C.C. that would mandate so-called net neutrality — requiring providers to give equal access to their networks to outside companies. He is now helping to oversee the rebuilding of the staff at the F.C.C.
.. Dan DiMicco, a former chief executive of the steelmaking company Nucor, who now serves on the board of directors of Duke Energy, is heading the transition team for the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Mr. DiMicco has long argued that China is unfairly subsidizing its manufacturing sector at the expense of American jobs.
.. “This is one of the reasons you had such anger among voters — people rigging the system, gaming the system,” Mr. Freed said. “This represents more of the same.”