It's no secret, among political junkies anyway, that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and much of the Republican elite have been casting around for a way to derail Donald Trump's bid to be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee. It's a delicate operation, to be certain. Trump's allure to the GOP primary voting base isn't just that he triggers the liberals, but that he ruffles the feathers of the Republican establishment. It makes the deplorables feel powerful, watching people like McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy bow and scrape to the ludicrous reality TV host foisted on them by their own voters. So the strategy is always about trying to find some way to undermine Trump without provoking him to unload personal invective on Truth Social in retaliation.
Some of the maneuvering is behind the scenes. As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post documented this week, Senate Republicans helped slip an electoral count reform bill into a larger spending bill. The covert move isn't just about circumventing Trump's plan to steal the 2024 election, but to do so in a quiet and highly technical manner that will likely avoid his attention.
