OK. I was wrong.

I was wrong about all of it.

I honestly didn’t expect Trump to go to the Democrats to get the deals needed to get Harvey relief, the debt ceiling, and the continuing resolution passed. Frankly, I didn’t expect the Democrats to want to deal with him, and I’m still not positive it was a great idea. Or even a good one.

But it looks like the entire crisis of September is now averted, in favour of a completely different crisis, one that’s largely internal to each party. The GOP now has to ask itself if, despite having a nominal majority (and as I said last time, their majority isn’t what they think it is given how out of step the “governing wing” is with the right-wing whacko fringe), it’s actually the governing party.

Most of us knew Trump was only using the GOP, because Trump doesn’t care about political parties. Trump cares about Trump. And Trump drifted right as he got older (remember, he used to be a registered Democrat), so there was no way the Democrats were even going to take him seriously as a candidate. So that left the GOP as the path to power, and he took it. Along the way, he spouted all kinds of insanity (which, let me be clear, I think he actually believes) and drummed up a base of hate-filled people that helped get him elected.

But the weird coalition that calls itself the GOP can’t actually legislate. Too many of them were elected on the premise that government is actually evil, and their sole reason for being in Congress is to do everything they can to dismantle government. There aren’t enough others to override them without Democrat votes, and the Democrats have, until recently, refused to vote for anything the GOP wanted, because most of it was terrible, and because they want the GOP to fail.

So Trump did something cunning — I hesitate to say “smart” because I still think the man is an ignoramus. But it was cunning. Reaching out to the Democrats, he knew that the majority of the GOP in both houses would go along with the results, because they desperately need to show that they can pass something — anything at all, ever. Especially disaster relief. While he knew that doing it the other way, the way he’s been doing it, the Democrats would all uniformly vote no for everything except, maybe, a clean disaster relief bill. Even if the identical mixed bill had been presented as a GOP idea, they’d have fought it.

But because it was “their” idea, they voted for it, and the GOP could do nothing but go along, because “their” President made the deal.

In a Parliamentary republic, the Head of Government is the person who holds a working majority in Parliament and can get bills passed. In the United States, the Head of Government is elected entirely independently of the legislature…which means he needs to build his own working majority if he’s going to get work done. That’s what Trump’s done here, on these specific issues. Whether it will last or not is nothing I care to predict.