President Donald Trump used a set of well-worn tactics to get the House to pass his “big, beautiful bill”: sugar in the form of praise and salt in the form of threats of primary challenges to any Republican holdouts.
But the next phase of getting his massive domestic policy bill passed could be harder, simply because Republican senators aren’t quite the same as Republican House members. They don’t have the same blind loyalty to the president. Maybe even more importantly, they have longer term limits.
“I could care less about a primary,” Sen. Ron Johnson told NOTUS just hours after the bill passed the House. “It’s just not going to work. It works in the House, it doesn’t work here. I’m concerned about my children and grandchildren. I’m not concerned about President Trump’s reaction.”