Our president is using his attorney general to make war on our chief central banker. He’s threatening real war that would destroy the Atlantic alliance. His immigration police are dangerously out of control. His broken health department says nothing about flu shots in the middle of a flu outbreak.
Worse than the flu, Donald Trump has the nation and much of the world in a political and social fever. When will it break? When the Epstein files are finally revealed, as required by a federal law co-sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie, whom Trump is trying to oust in Kentucky’s Fourth District? We sure haven’t heard much about the files since Trump imposed suzerainty on Venezuela.
There’s no telling when the files will see full light, but Trump’s political standing is already shrinking, from growing Republican objections and from the action of state election laws. It shrank just a little more on Friday, Jan. 9, the filing deadline for this year’s primary elections in Kentucky. As more such deadlines pass (in half the states by March 15, and in 32 by the end of March), more Republicans in Congress will no longer fear a Trump-endorsed primary opponent and will be more willing to buck him.
There were several signs of that as Congress reconvened. Massie and Rep. James Comer were among 35 House Republicans who voted to override Trump’s spiteful veto of a Colorado water project. Comer represents the First District, would like to be elected governor next year, and may figure that he needs a few fig leaves of independence from a president who may be largely discredited by the time November 2027 rolls around.
By that time, Gov. Andy Beshear will probably have been a declared presidential candidate for some time, and he keeps moving closer to it, most recently and publicly in his Jan. 7 State of the Commonwealth and budget address, which was chock-full of hints.
Beshear said “American” or “America” 30 times, beginning with “To every Kentuckian and every American watching from home, good evening.” (The address was on C-SPAN and covered live by Jonathan Martin, senior political columnist and politics bureau chief for Politico, ahead of an interview with Beshear the next day.) Most of those references were to “the American Dream,” which the governor said is being threatened by “the president’s big, ugly bill.”
The address was given in the state History Center, because the Capitol is under renovation – “a reminder that our great democracy at times can buckle, and that cracks in the foundation and stress on the joints can threaten our very future,” Beshear said.
Most of the speech was a Beshear brag-and-propose litany, but there were enough national references to hold the attention of Democrats in other states. And Beshear continued his steady improvement in presentation, much as one of his national rivals, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, did the next night in Sacramento.
Beshear cited Kentucky as an object example to a country “looking to find hope beyond the chaos” and “a national politics poisoned with division,” a state where “We’ve found a way to work together, to find unity, and to succeed.” But Republican legislators have long been the state’s main policymakers, due to their big majorities, and most didn’t attend the speech. Senate President Robert Stivers said Beshear’s presidential chances were worse than a snowball’s in hell.
Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne have little use for Beshear, and continue to reject his call for universal pre-kindergarten. Beshear surely knows his big policy proposal is doomed; he said “If you’re against this because you think it gives me a win, what you’re really doing is handing these kids a loss.”
Perhaps Democrats in this year’s legislative elections can make an issue of pre-K, but it would make little difference in the balance of power because they don’t even have candidates running for most Republican seats, as Louisville Public Media first reported.
Beshear described Kentucky’s political situation best when he compared it with the nation’s: “In Kentucky, we’ve turned down the temperature.” That’s mainly due to traditional Republican leaders like Stivers and Osborne, who have done a good job of thwarting most of their feverish members’ wishes. For example, Osborne said on KET Monday night that Somerset Rep. Shane Baker’s bill to bar naturalized citizens from public office has constitutional problems.
On the same show, Stivers revealed that he had rebuffed a White House request that the legislature split Jefferson County among more congressional districts in order to oust 3rd District Rep. Morgan McGarvey, the only Democrat in the state’s delegation. He also said legislators hadn’t discussed further limiting the governor’s powers—which Comer was surely glad to hear.
So, as we pray for the national fever to break, let’s be thankful that Kentucky isn’t so badly afflicted.
This commentary is republished from the Northern Kentucky Tribune, a nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism.
Al Cross (@ruralj) is a retired professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Kentucky School of Journalism. His opinions are his own. He was the longest-serving political writer for the Louisville Courier Journal (1989-2004) and national president of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2001-02. He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2010.
