Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Republicans Protecting Trump? Actually, It's Worse

It's difficult to see how the Comey memos help Trump, easier to see how they help hardcore conservatives pushing for their release.

April 20, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC

By Jonathan Bernstein

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Investigating the investigators.
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Are Republicans in Congress providing cover for President Donald Trump in his struggles against the Russia investigation, as Matt Yglesias writes, "in exchange" for his acquiescence on orthodox conservative legislation? Perhaps. But another explanation is just as likely and completely aligned with the Republican Party we've known for years.

The Trump era has changed a lot of things in Washington, but House Republicans have behaved in a remarkably familiar way, given their split between mainstream conservatives and radical ones which dates back even before the Tea Party's rise at the beginning of the Obama administration. The Freedom Caucus took things several steps further, helping to convince House Speaker John Boehner to retire in 2015. Here's how he described those lawmakers in Vanity Fair last year: