Echoing House Speaker Paul Ryan's remarks in the days since the election, victorious Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told Fox & Friends that a unified Republican government will be ready to start taking action on a host of fronts as soon as the new president is sworn in roughly two months from now. The era of divided government, which frustrated President Bush at the end of his presidency and led to sometimes acrimonious gridlock during the last six Obama years, is over -- for at least two years. And, depending on how things play out, quite possibly longer than that. Conservatives expect the GOP at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to seize on this historic opportunity afforded to them by voters. Conway's attitude suggests that they're gearing up to hit the ground running:
“Divided government is over.” @KellyannePolls says in first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, there will be a “flurry of activity.” pic.twitter.com/4sNnPfT8BK
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 21, 2016
"This country not only elected a Republican president and Vice President, but gave them a Republican House and Senate, the majority of governorships, and a huge majority of the state legislatures," she says. "That's not accidental or coincidental. That's called a mandate." As you'll see in the full interview, not all of Trump's agenda items are music to fiscal hawks' ears. Conway notes that Democrats are very excited about the prospect of a large, federally-funded infrastructure project (paid for somehow, she vows), but also runs down a checklist of other items such as replacing Obamacare and removing the shackles from the US energy industry:
For more details on how Republicans can uproot Obamacare and replace it with something better, read this post from last week, and this solid analysis from Politico. As for yesterday's much-discussed Trump/Romney sit-down, Conway said it was productive and reminded viewers that Romney's critiques of the Obama administration's failures were on point:
.@KellyannePolls describes President-elect Trump’s meeting with @MittRomney as a "productive conversation." pic.twitter.com/EWYzFryMhI
— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 21, 2016
I'll leave you with some added perspective to what Leah reported this morning: That a new national survey shows Donald Trump's favorability rating swinging his way by a double-digit margin since the election:
“This honeymoon phase is common for new presidents. For example, Obama saw about a 20-point swing in his favor following the 2008 election.” https://t.co/ldlxBfLTaC
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) November 21, 2016