It’s all fun and games until a pile of malevolent orange rinds demands term limits
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I don’t expect Trump’s insistence that “We’re going to put on term limits,” to go make it past his first week in office – assuming he can find it. Which is all the more reason to enjoy the sight of Republicans in Congress dodging their loose cannon while it lasts.
If one thing could put Mr. Trump on a collision course with his new allies on Capitol Hill, it is his embrace of proposals such as term limits and tougher restrictions on allowing lawmakers and top aides to become lobbyists in the lucrative world of Washington influence peddling.
Members of Congress like to talk about returning power to the people, but many would prefer not to vote to limit their own tenure or future employment opportunities. Bringing up term limits now is seen by some as raining on their postelection parade.
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, made that quite clear last week when he said the Senate outlook for term limits was severely limited.
“I would say we have term limits now,” Mr. McConnell told reporters. “They’re called elections. And it will not be on the agenda in the Senate.”
Since Trump won, McConnell’s expression makes me think of how John Wither must have looked right before the bear got him.
Still, Mr. Trump’s highlighting of his call for term limits — it is No. 1 on his list of priorities to “clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C.” — revives an initiative that has been dormant in Washington for years after Republicans rode it to the House takeover in 1994 but then failed to make it happen.
I suppose anything is possible, but I don’t see Congress pushing term limits through, ever. Now it just remains for some poor doomed soul to explain a bill does not become a law by Tweeting angrily about it.
Meanwhile, President Obama is probably not trolling Republicans by encouraging their little fingered monster.
Mr. Trump found a surprising kindred spirit on term limits on Monday when President Obama seemed to endorse the concept as well.
“I think we want to see new voices and new ideas emerge,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “That’s part of the reason why I think term limits are a really useful thing.”
