Ok, so imagine you’re say, in the caporegime and you’re in a sitdown with the boss, the underboss, and the consigliere.
The boss says to you, “this is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to do this for me.”
You’re feeling brave, so you look the boss in the eyes and respond “you know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn’t listen to him, either.”
This is the mob, so do you know what happens next? You get whacked. That’s what.
As it turns out, that’s exactly the scene that played out in Washington earlier this week when Steve Bannon all but threatened to physically harm members of the House Freedom Caucus if they didn’t back the GOP health bill.
Now we learn that, just like an old school mob boss, Don Bannon pushed Trump to let lawmakers vote on Paul Ryan’s bill even though he (Bannon) knew the vote would fail.
Why? Simple: Bannon wanted to make a (political) hit list so he would know exactly who needed to be (politically) whacked.
Seriously.
Mr. Bannon and the president’s more soft-spoken legislative affairs director, Marc Short, pushed Mr. Trump hard to insist on a public vote, as a way to identify, shame and pressure “no” voters who were killing their best chance to unravel the health care law.
One Republican congressional aide who was involved in the last-minute negotiations said Mr. Bannon and Mr. Short were seeking to compile an enemies list. Mr. Ryan repeatedly counseled the president to avoid seeking vengeance – at least until he has passed spending bills and a debt-ceiling increase needed to keep the government running. In the end, the president decided to back down.
Knowing that, Trump’s words on Friday evening sound a bit foreboding, no?…
We all learned a lot – we learned a lot about loyalty.
Mitch McConnell better be taking notes.
Maybe Bannon went to the Putin School of Conflict Resolution.