GOP/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “There is no annulling this marriage.
For several weeks, congressional Republicans have grown more brazen, inch by careful inch, in creating a measure of distance from President Trump. Perhaps he should not declare war on the face of a female host of ‘Morning Joe,’ they have suggested, or antagonize Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader straining to usher Mr. Trump’s agenda through the Capitol.
More recently, they have allowed that when a president’s words give heart to neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, it is probably not ideal.
Yet this fever dream of an era in Washington — where identifying as anti-Nazi has become grist for an executive-bucking profile in courage — has obscured a longer-term truth about the relationship between Mr. Trump and his ostensible allies in conservative policy making: For now, and almost certainly for much longer, they are stuck with each other.
For one, much of the Republican base stands with Mr. Trump, rejecting criticisms of his equivocations about white supremacists and insisting that protest groups on the left are at least as insidious.
For another, the president still has a pen — deployed too infrequently to date for elected officials who would prefer to have more to run on next year than a series of post office dedications.”
-Matt Flegenheimer, “Republicans in Congress May Be Stuck in a Relationship With Trump,” The New York Times online, Aug. 17, 2017