Sorry to do this guys, but examples of what I’m talking about…
Bold Prediction - zero Republicans cross over to vote against Puzder, Puzder makes it through 52-48.
It really doesn't matter if there are crossovers now. Today's vote shows that fifty Republicans are cowards who will happily vote in lockstep with their Fuhrer regardless of how unwise it is, and that's all that's needed.
Bold Prediction - zero Republicans cross over to vote against Puzder, Puzder makes it through 52-48.
Better question, will any Republican vote against any of the remaining nominees?
Better question yet, will any of the 50 cowards ever oppose Trump in any meaningful way? (i.e. not just talk it abstractly, a la "maaaaaaaaybe I'll have to vote against Tillerson 
")
Of course, this was a failure in the House rather than the Senate, but the same thing would’ve happened if the Senate had gone first. The fact that they were willing to approve his entire Cabinet except Puzder didn’t actually mean that they’d always go along with him on policy.
The argument some folks seemed to be buying into was that Trump had some sort of unique mind meld with the GOP base, and that would insulate him from defections. The fact that he spoke with a 4th grade level vocabulary and insulted people made him some kind of working class hero, which made his support from the base more "authentic"....or something.
It's much more common to vote against your party on legislation than on a cabinet appointment.
It still makes the point that Congressional Republicans are something more than a rubber-stamp to the Trump Administration agenda. Many of them showed less sense than would be desirable (not that this is anything new out of the House), but it does hurt the "Trump as fascist dictator" meme that some people have been pushing. A fascist dictator would have had more success doing something of this sort.
Angry rants aside, the point is not that Trump IS a fascist dictator, it is that he WANTS to be a fascist dictator. (Or at least be free to act like one.) Our saving grace is that Trump is not merely evil, he is grossly incompetent at everything save conning suckers.
That incompetence may come to hurt the nation badly, but it also means his efforts at turning the Presidency of the United States in a corrupt autocracy are as pathetic as they are petty. That doesn't mean they cannot be dangerous, just that Trump is more likely to end up like Commodus than Augustus.
While repeal/replacing Obamacare might have met the same fate with any of Trump's primary opponents in the White House, I am very skeptical any of them (even Rubio or Carson) would have so much ostentatious and uncoordinated ineptitude in execution. That the "winner" and "master of the deal" responded to setbacks by throwing tantrums and pointing fingers does a better job discrediting him than anything else I can say.
