Early last week, Republicans put out word that they think Democrats will help them fund the government and increase the debt limit—that is, to clear obstacles in the way of a Trump-led heist of the government.

House and Senate GOP leaders are internally debating a possible deal with Democrats that would include government funding, California wildfire aid, a debt-limit hike and border security money, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.

Senior Republicans have been privately mulling a bipartisan government funding deal for weeks now, wary that they may not be able to add a debt-limit hike to their party-line reconciliation package given internal GOP divisions over the matter. But conversations around the potential larger deal have heated up in recent days as GOP leaders try to figure out how to lift the approaching debt ceiling while also advancing a massive, party-line reconciliation bill and avoiding a March 15 government shutdown.

Then late on Friday night, Donald Trump fired, or attempted to fire, over a dozen inspectors general—watchdogs within government departments and agencies who investigate fraud, abuse, and other irregular activity.

I can’t really blame GOP leaders for suspecting Democrats will roll over. But the Trump administration’s mad blitz of corruption should be the moment Democratic leaders finally seize some initiative and say no: We will not place our imprimatur on Trump’s assault against the rule of law. You were elected to govern, not just to steal. So if you want to steal, have at it, but you can expect zero Democratic votes.

Only with that kind of resolve might Democrats be able to exercise some leverage over Trump and make him follow the law.

I’ll explain how that might work below, but for now the difficulty is that Democrats show almost no resolve of any kind.

Become a member

THE MEDIAN IS THE MESSAGE

Through reckless orders and illegal spending freezes, and now the lawless purge of the IGs, Trump is or promises to be in violation of the law and Constitution on a number of fronts.

And it is true that some prominent Democrats have sounded the alarm.

But it would not be true to say that forcing Trump back into compliance is a party-wide priority. For every Democrat who will say that Trump is corrupt and lawless without hedging, there’s another who will only complain that this or that abuse will do nothing about the price of eggs, and a third who won’t say anything at all.

It may be that the response to the IG purge has been subdued because the firings might be reversed. Trump is required under law to provide Congress 30 days notice and proper justification for firing inspectors general, which means these IGs can show up for work this morning and possibly keep their jobs long term.

But it’s also clearly an outgrowth of a generally limp will within the Democratic ranks.

Their lack of resolve to protect the country when it’s most endangered is downstream of their approach to party building. A party does a lot of things, but its overarching priority is to win as much power as possible come election time. Opinions differ over how to do this, and how well Democrats do this relative to their potential. But they tend to go about the project of party building race by race (or brick by brick, if you prefer) recruiting candidates in competitive elections who are substantively and temperamentally moderate, so that they can maximize appeal to the median voter.

There is a plain logic to this approach (you can tally up every majority 1 + 1 + 1…) but there is also a cost. These candidates are encouraged, implicitly and explicitly, to develop brand independence from the Democratic Party, and advertise a penchant for bipartisanship. They are not laden with many expectations—of what the party stands for or how individual members must help the team achieve its goals.

Thus, on approach to any significant partisan conflict, there’s a good chance the party will enter it divided (which in turn encourages Republicans to foment more partisan conflict). Frontline members were not selected to perform reliably in partisan conflict—quite the contrary—and so they try desperately to avoid it. All Republicans have to do against a divided opposition is limit defections, and they win by default. Under Trump, winning means chipping away at democracy and the rule of law.

This can’t be how Democratic officials want to be remembered—for plunging their heads in the sand as America crumbled to fascism.

FOLLOWER LEADERS

Democratic leaders can avoid that fate by pouring cold water on GOP plans. By saying, there will be no Democratic votes to prop up this out of control administration until the corruption spree comes to an end.

What would this mean in practice? ...