Trump Faces Tough Fights Even With House, Senate Majorities, This Hill Veteran Says
Bradley Devlin /
Republicans have earned an electoral mandate unlike anything the party has seen since the 1980s.
Rachel Bovard, vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute and veteran of over a decade of working on Capitol Hill, told me on the latest episode of “The Signal Sitdown” that conservatives “cannot waste it.”
For the first time in 20 years, the Republican presidential nominee carried the popular vote. President-elect Donald Trump captured more than 300 Electoral College votes on the way to an election victory that reshaped the Republican Party’s coalition.
Republicans also retained control of the House and flipped the Senate. The future of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement seems secure for the next four years. But Bovard says its continuation depends on actually making America great again.
“I think what the Republican Party and sort of MAGA generally has inherited with this election is a tremendous coalition, and we cannot waste it,” Bovard told me. “We cannot waste it navel-gazing about K Street interests and foreign wars and the issues of a top tier of corporations in the defense base.”
“The things that we’ve done in the past are not going to satisfy this new coalition,” she added. “I think we have a very limited time to get it right with policies that really resonate with the working class, get the border under control, fix the economy, and promote families in this country again.”
“I think we do those things in the first year, MAGA becomes synonymous with Republican policies, which are synonymous with helping working people. And then we’re taking that rocket ship to the moon,” Bovard said.
Trump is busy filling out his Cabinet well before he is sworn in again on Jan. 20.
With nominees such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for attorney general and Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, the corporate media has accused the president-elect of selecting loyalists. This is no surprise to Bovard, however, especially given the experience of the first Trump administration.
“I mean, loyalty is the game, right?” Bovard said. “This idea that somehow you’re going to bring in people—I think it’s very cute—that people are like, ‘Oh, I’m going to have people that disagree with me in my Cabinet.’ Well, that might be true on surface things, right? Like they may disagree with you on your choice of tableware. But at the end of the day, you’re both committed to the ideological project of what you’re trying to do. That is just politics, right?”
“Look, what we saw in Trump One was just massive undermining of the president. And I mean this both at a constitutionally threatening level as much as I mean it on a superficial, people-trying-to-make-money-off-it [level],” Bovard explained. “You have to be committed not only to the president himself—you respect and honor the person that you serve—but the president’s ideological agenda.”
“It is, of course, common sense that you would pick people who want to execute your agenda,” she said.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have elected Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as Senate GOP leader. As Republicans look to pass Trump’s agenda through the Senate under Thune’s leadership, Bovard reflected on McConnell’s legacy.
“I do think his legacy will be one of really just devaluing the Senate for what it is,” Bovard said.
“His leadership has been marked by pettiness and almost insecurity,” she said. “This need to control absolutely everything, from who gets money for campaigns, to what comes to the floor, and when and who can offer amendments, and what this outcome is going to look like, and what the bill is going to look like to the extent that only I am allowed to draft it in my office with my staff—that is the mark of an insecure person. It’s not the mark of a powerful person.”
“So I think, you know, we’ll look back on his legacy as something that was and [is] perhaps not to be repeated,” Bovard concluded.
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the vice president-elect, could also have a role in making sure Trump’s agenda gets through the Senate. As president of the Senate, “[Vance] has a tremendous amount of authority,” Bovard said.
Vance “has a constitutional role as president of the Senate that is not limited to breaking ties,” she said. “He can preside anytime he wants over the Senate. So he could be in the chair of the Senate, issuing rulings, recognizing senators, or not, right? The vice president has an office off the Senate floor. As far as I know, it’s the only executive branch official that has an office anywhere in the legislature. So he can play a very muscular role.”
“He also has a very important diplomatic role in the Senate as the president’s representative,” Bovard said of Vance. “He can go and talk to the Republicans anytime he wants. The Republican senators meet for lunch three times a week. He can attend those lunches. He can be there representing the administration, working on strategy. I mean, he can be a very powerful, powerful player in the conference itself but also on the Senate floor, if he chooses to be.”
With major shake-ups expected across Washington in January, it appears all options are on the table to bring runaway government to heel during the second Trump administration.