Charen: I mean, there has been a burst of frankness that\u2019s come out of this \u2014 what you call the YOLO caucus \u2014 which includes Thom Tillis, who is not running again.<\/p>\n
Siegel: From North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Charen: From North Carolina. It includes Mitch McConnell, it includes several others, and they are making some pretty forthright statements. Thom Tillis, for example, said \u2014 regarding this slush fund that Trump proposes \u2014 he said, \u201cI call it a payout pot for punks.\u201d Now, that is the kind of language we haven\u2019t heard. You\u2019ve even had people like Senator Mitch McConnell saying: \u201cSo the nation\u2019s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong \u2014 take your pick.\u201d Those are the kind of words you did not hear from most Republicans for the past 10 years. I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s going to be a legislative impact, but what we are getting now, with these newly freed YOLO Republicans, is insight into what they have been saying behind the scenes all this time. And any dose of honesty is healthy.<\/p>\n
Dionne: You know, I think there are two issues here: One, to go where Mona left off, it is clear that there is more dissidence publicly now than there was even a month ago. I think his endorsement of Paxton and turning his back on Cornyn actually played a role in this, because Cornyn was very popular among his colleagues. He almost became the leader \u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
Charen: And he raised a ton of money for them.<\/p>\n
Dionne: Yeah. And so I think a lot of them took that badly. And so they become dissident. This slush fund is a step, or five steps or 100 steps, way too far, even for them. The war itself is starting to split Republicans, with some of the most hawkish Republicans, like Roger Wicker from Mississippi, who\u2019s not known as somebody who\u2019s going to run out there and attack Trump, making a very strong statement about the possibility of \u2014 he didn\u2019t use the word \u201csellout,\u201d but it was along those lines.<\/p>\n
So you are seeing this dissidence. The magic number is three plus one. The question is, if these YOLOs vote together \u2014 YOLOs, a new term, I use it respectfully \u2014 if the three of them vote together, you know that puts a lot of pressure on is Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Susan Collins of Maine, who\u2019s up for re-election, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Because they have been publicly dissident, but they could cast \u201cno\u201d votes up to now that had no actual effect on what was happening in the Senate. If these three vote no, then the Collins and Murkowski votes become very significant, because they are, in another sense \u2014 to pick up your earlier term \u2014 majority makers. They get them to 51. Now, I\u2019m still skeptical that John Cornyn, who\u2019s a party loyalist deep all the way down, is going to break as much as I think Cassidy and Tillis might, but we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charen: I mean, there has been a burst of frankness that\u2019s come out of this \u2014 what you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[62819,82363,82362,82364,61689,61690,63784,651,1452,416,5292,97296,97298,1480,1443,63785,182,16498,17073,97299,17082,46937,97300,9,11,10,97297,5007,61691,1671,1707,5291,1875,5285,855,82365,63783,1777,1069,2052,1554,1876],"class_list":["post-249113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-audio-neutral-informative","tag-bill-1957","tag-cassidy","tag-collins","tag-conservatism-us-politics","tag-cornyn","tag-crockett","tag-democratic-party","tag-donald-j","tag-elections","tag-fees-and-rates","tag-gingrich","tag-greene","tag-international-relations","tag-james","tag-jasmine","tag-john","tag-ken","tag-law-and-legislation","tag-marjorie-taylor-1974","tag-mcconnell","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-mitch","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-newt","tag-oil-petroleum-and-gasoline","tag-paxton","tag-politics-and-government","tag-polls-and-public-opinion","tag-prices-fares","tag-primaries-and-caucuses","tag-republican-party","tag-senate","tag-susan-m","tag-talarico","tag-texas","tag-trump","tag-united-states-economy","tag-united-states-international-relations","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}