Somewhat to my surprise, Collins and Murkowski are voting to confirm all of Trump’s cabinet nominees except Hegseth. Murkowski won’t pay a price for that–she represents a red state, after all–but Collins will. As with Kavanaugh, she will be held responsible by the good people of Maine for all of the havoc that Kennedy, Gabbard, and Patel will wreak over the next few years.
But McConnell has remained firm. Why? Because he understands that an unrestrained Trump is the end of the McConnell Project. If Congress and the judiciary can’t keep a Republican president within the guardrails, how can you rely on them when the left is in power? What good is the filibuster if the Senate has ceded all of its power to the executive? What difference does a conservative judiciary make if the president has the practical ability to ignore it?