George Will: Vote against GOP in midterms

Conservative columnist George Will is making the argument to vote against Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. 

In a piece published Friday in The Washington Post, Will says that President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border was “the most telegenic recent example of misrule” and provided “fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which” independents and moderate Republicans should vote.

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That principle, he says, is that the number of Republicans in office must be “substantially reduced.”

“The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers,” Will wrote. “They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.” 

Will targets House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and many other Republican lawmakers for serving as the “president’s poodles.” 

“Not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it,” Will added. “Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president.”

Will continued that the failure of Congress to respond in productive ways to the president has impaired the Constitution’s separation of powers. 

“The Republican-controlled Congress, which waited for Trump to undo by unilateral decree the border folly they could have prevented by actually legislating, is an advertisement for the unimportance of Republican control.” 

Will’s criticism comes after a tumultuous week for Trump — one in which he ultimately signed an executive order to stop the practice of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. It remains unclear, however, how or when the thousands of families divided will be reunited. 

Will has frequently criticized the GOP under Trump. Last week he accused the party of being subservient to the president while making an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”