The OP of the linked thread excluded Congress & SCOTUS, so I’m opening a new thread here.
I’m defining “grown-up” as:
a reasonably competent person who
has not drunk the Trumpian Kool-Aid, and is not pretending to do so,
and crucially
is actively taking steps to deal with our unruly child President and his admin in a way that is MORE than politics as usual. So Democrats don’t count by virtue of being Democrats; liberal SCOTUS judges don’t count by virtue of their votes. They have to show signs that they recognize that we are in extraordinary times, and be doing something new or otherwise standing out.
I’m particularly interested as I’m not living in the US and don’t see a lot of the day-to-day coverage.
Rand Paul. I disagree with most of his political positions. None the less, he was on point with his recent takedown of Markwayne Mullin, who Trump nominated for secretary of Homeland Security. His approach to Mullin during his recent Senate confirmation hearings shows that Paul hasn’t gone the way many other Republicans have.
SCOTUS Chief John Roberts. Sure, he’s conservative and he votes with Trump more often than not. But IMHO he will fight Trump against turning the Supreme Court into a complete rubber stamp.
I think he would / does if it comes down to his vote being the swing vote. But he’s not going to go down as the 4th vote in a bunch of 4-5 decisions in favor of Trump in cases where the swing vote is Gorsuch, Coney-Barret, or Kavanaugh. In those situations he’s more likely to make it 3-6 in favor of Trump, siding with the majority.
It seems to me that point 2 might be the hardest to distinguish. If someone agrees with a policy or position of the administration, I can see a lot of room for debate on whether they swallowed any Flavor-Aid*.
Thomas Massie. I haven’t looked much into his personal politics and I’m sure they’re reprehensible, but he’s been doing the right thing in fighting to get the Epstein files out to the public.
Yeah, that’s why I specified that it doesn’t matter why. Ascribing intent is challenging. But assume that if their actions by and large agree with the administration, they’re either fools or cynically using the situation for their own gain, but not being adults in the room.
That isn’t what I meant. Let’s assume a sane, grown-up Republican: they’d still agree with a lot of the policies, and perhaps vote accordingly. But they’d push back against the breaking of norms and the flagrantly un-Constitutional actions, and they’d do this by calling out bad behavior in public, speaking out, apologizing for their side, etc.
He was against Trump picking a law to justify his tariffs when that law said nothing about tariffs. But Roberts believes in the general principle that Congress can delegate it’s constitutional powers such as taxation to the executive. He’ll be fine with Trump misusing another law, so long as it mentions tariffs.
Roberts does not believe it is his job to protect and uphold the Constitution. He narrowly rules on cases.
If Trump is the child and Roberts is the parent, Roberts is raising a spoiled brat.
P.S. It is not just Roberts, or even the Roberts court. SCOTUS also allowed congress to delegate its constitutional powers to past presidents.
And yet when a Democratic president tries to do something that is explicitly provided for in a law, Roberts claims that is a “major question” and Congress cannot delegate that kind of power.
It’s better to say that Roberts’s general principle is to bind Democratic presidents and unleash Republican ones.
This is about John Roberts. It is not grownup to base legal judgments on this sort of politicking. He went along with the president as king argument and if he thinks this is good law he is a fool. The historian member of the Votemaster thinks Roberts is a candidate to displace Roger Tanny (of Dred Scott fame) as the worst chief justice of all time.
As far as adults in congress, there are a few, but they have decided not to run for reelection. I’m not looking at Democrats since I cannot judge how they would be if the shoe was on the other foot. I do admire Bernie though, not so much for his current actions, but for his success as mayor of Burlington.
Well, even that is quite contrary to the principles of the United States, where the president is first among equals, but equally subject to the rule of law.
Trump has demonstrated that the president does not go to jail, even for felonies committed as a private citizen. A grown-up would have been ruling with more of an eye toward the future republic.
The ruling was that the President not only has absolute immunity for official acts that are exclusively the realm of the Executive’s authority (e.g., pardons, command of the military, execution of laws, and control of the executive branch), and at least presumptive immunity for all other official acts.
Agreed about Bernie. Back in 2016, I supported Hillary Clinton for Democratic nomination. I know that Clinton isn’t, say, Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin, but her politics and manner of approaching being a senator were similar. Since 2016, I like Bernie’s approach a lot more than those of the “mainstream” Democratic senators like Schumer. So yes, I’d say Bernie is one of the adults in the room, even when compared to the mainstream Democratic senators.