Matthew Dowd: The Big Beautiful Bill Passage Demonstrates that Trump Controls the Republican Party ‘Lock, Stock, and Barrel’

EXCERPT:

DOWD: “Yeah, if it wasn’t demonstrated before today or yesterday that he controls this party lock, stock and barrel, it was demonstrated by this. Even though, as mentioned, even those people that said they’d never vote for this bill, in the end at 3:00 or 2:00 in the morning ended up voting for it. I don’t understand why, especially those Republicans in swing seats would have gone for this. This is the situation, it’s almost a perfect storm of a problem for a midterm for Republicans. And I don’t think Donald Trump fundamentally cares. He only cares about his own political, you know, standing in this and not the Republican Party as a whole in this. And so, here’s what you have. You have an unpopular president governing over an unpopular party, passing a very unpopular policy. And if they think those three things are great to run on going into the midterm, they’ve completely fooled themselves in the course of this. And so, I think the fear is, I think they operate, these Republicans operate such from a place of fear and not, as we would hope, from a love of the common good and the love of the country. They fear a primary more than they fear a general election in the course of this. But unpopular president combined with an unpopular party with an unpopular policy is not a great mix for success.”