Political:Heather Cox Richardson, Dec. 17, Pt 2 (McConnell)

But for all their faith that Trump will deregulate the economy, economic leaders seem to think his other promises were just rhetoric.

Brian Schwartz of the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that business executives have been lobbying Trump to change his declared plans on tariffs. The president-elect has vowed to place tariffs of 25% on products from Canada and Mexico, and of an additional 10% on products from China. He claims to believe that other countries will pay these tariffs, but in fact U.S. consumers will pay them. That, plus the fact that other countries will almost certainly respond with their own tariffs against U.S. products, makes economists warn that Trump’s plans will hurt the economy with both inflation and trade wars.

Schwartz reported that some companies and some Republicans are hoping that Trump’s tariff threats are simply a bargaining tactic.

Trump supporters say something similar about his vow to deport 11 to 20 million undocumented immigrants, hoping he won’t actually go after long-term, hardworking undocumented people. On December 10, Jack Dolan reported in the Los Angeles Times that the resort town of Mammoth Lakes, California, depends on migrant labor, and on December 15, Eli Saslow and Erin Schaff of the New York Times reported the story of an undocumented worker brought to the U.S. as an infant, who is now trying to figure out his future after his beloved father-in-law voted for Trump. Two days ago, CNN reported on Trump-supporting dairy farmers in South Dakota who depend on undocumented workers, insisting that Trump will not round up undocumented immigrants, no matter what he says.

One person who is not discounting Trump’s threats is Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). McConnell will give up his leadership position in January and has told his colleagues he feels “liberated.”

McConnell appears to be taking a stand against Trump’s expected appointee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy speaks often against vaccines, and after the New York Times reported that the lawyer working with Kennedy to vet potential HHS staff petitioned federal regulators to take the polio vaccine off the market, McConnell—a polio survivor—warned: “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

McConnell has also been vocal about his opposition to Trump’s isolationism. He is a champion of sending military support to Ukraine and, after he steps down from the leadership, will chair the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, the subcommittee that controls military spending. “America’s national security interests face the gravest array of threats since the Second World War,” McConnell says. “At this critical moment, a new Senate Republican majority has a responsibility to secure the future of U.S. leadership and primacy.”

McConnell will also chair the Rules Committee, which gives him a chance to stop MAGA senators from trying to abandon the power of the Senate and permit Trump to get his way. McConnell has said that “[d]efending the Senate as an institution and protecting the right to political speech in our elections remain among my longest-standing priorities.”

That last sentence identifies the current struggle in the Republican Party. McConnell is showing his willingness to prevent Trump and MAGA Republicans from bulldozing their way through the Senate in order to undermine the departments of Justice, Defense, and Health and Human Services, among others. But when he talks about “protecting the right to political speech in our elections,” he is talking about protecting the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that permits corporations and wealthy individuals to flood our elections, and thus our political system, with money.

It is those corporations and wealthy individuals who are now lining up for tax cuts and deregulation, but who don’t want the tariffs or mass deportations or isolationism Trump’s “America First” MAGA base wants.

Trump and his team have been talking about their election win as a “mandate” and a “landslide,” but it was actually a razor thin victory with more voters choosing someone other than Trump than voting for him. He will need the support of establishment Republicans in the Senate to put his MAGA policies in place.

At yesterday's press conference, he appeared to be nodding to McConnell when he promised: “You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to happen.” McConnell’s fierce use of power in the past suggests that the Senate’s giving up its constitutional power to bend to Trump’s will isn’t likely to happen, either.