Washington Wednesday: Power plays

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for Washington Wednesday.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Joining us is Political scientist and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker. Hunter, good morning.

BAKER: Good morning

MAST: Hunter, last week the question was whether a government shutdown happens … now it’s what happens next … and both sides have their talking points. Here’s Majority Leader John Thune:

THUNE: Right here Mr President, it’s right in front of us. Right here. We can pass this today. Pass it right now. All we have to do, get support from the Democrats. House has passed it, this is the House passed bill. We take it up in the Senate, pass it, send it to President, President signs it into law, and the government stays funded.

And Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had this to say:

SCHUMER: All they want to do is force us, try to bully us, (they’re not going to succeed) into taking their partisan bill, take it or leave it. That is not how this place works. And that’s why we’re headed into a shutdown, because Republicans refuse to negotiate a bipartisan bill.

Both sides aim to make the other side feel the burn of a shutdown…who do you think comes out more scorched?

BAKER: I think that they have sort of a different calculus on each side. Chuck Schumer, the last time we faced a potential shutdown, he went ahead and cooperated with the President to avoid it, and he was burned—tremendous explosions on the left, making him look vulnerable. Some people think that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wants his Senate seat, and so suddenly he was the old guy who's not far enough to the left, not fighting hard enough against Donald Trump. Chuck Schumer is nothing if not a survivor, and he knows he is not going to do that again, so he is geared up to fight this time. And so the Democrats are saying that we're going to allow a shutdown, because what we want is to make sure that the covid era subsidies for Obamacare continue. So the line is, we are protecting your health care. The Republicans, on the other hand, they have sort of their open agenda and their secret agenda, or semi secret agenda. The Open agenda is to say that we're not going to fund health care for illegal immigrants. But on the side, they're looking at Russ Vought, the OMB director, and Vought,, has been thinking about this and planning on this for a long time, and he thinks that he can make significant cuts in the federal bureaucracy in the case of a shutdown, I think that Chuck Schumer knew that the first time around, and he didn't want to give Russ Vought, that kind of leeway. But this time we are going to have a shutdown, and we're going to see what Russ Vought is going to do.

EICHER: That's interesting. And I was going to bring that up with you, Hunter. It seemed like President Trump was listening to you last week talking about Russ Vought and the kind of pain that he could impose on the Democrats. Let's listen to what he said in a press conference yesterday afternoon.

TRUMP: We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like. And you know all you all know Russell Vought. He's become very popular recently, because he can trim the budget to a level that you couldn't do any other way. So they're taking a risk by having a shutdown …

So what do you think Russ Vought actually can do as head of OMB? And do you think it'll work?

BAKER: Yeah, I think that when Congress passes a law, they don't pass a law saying how many people have to be hired to carry out a task. They say what they want done. They don't say everything about how it's going to be done, about the resources that will be used to do it. And that's where the executive has the ability to make some choices. And I think that Russ Vought is going to be able to say we have a fiscal situation that has to be managed. And I think I can manage it by getting rid of some non essential resources within the government, including employees and so again, this is not something that's coming out of left field. This is the kind of thing that he has been thinking about for years and years, and certainly during that interim kind of Biden administration. And now he's back in the seat, and he is ready to act.

EICHER: Yesterday, the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth addressed top generals at the Quantico Marine base near Washington…

HEGSETH: The topic today is about the nature of ourselves. Because no plan, no program, no no reform, no formation, will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and the right culture at the War Department.

EICHER: He talked about culture and concerns about woke hiring and promotions, climate change … things like that that characterized the previous administration … the kind of things that Hegseth says undermine lethality. The military’s ability to do its grim task when called upon …

Now there was some expectation in the run-up that the secretary would’ve provided concrete detail on budgets or set policies in place … and some are scoffing at what he did do instead. What do you think?

BAKER: I'll be honest, I'm puzzled by this maneuver. First of all, I mean maybe the timing is bad. You're on the edge of a shutdown, and you're going to go to the expense of bringing every general around the globe to the Capitol for this kind of a presentation. And then when you do that, you build up all this suspense about what's going to be said. It's not necessarily the sort of drama that you expect. I mean, you have Pete Hegseth talking about why, why he's going to be a secretary of war and, and about the need for physical fitness and not having beards and and not being woke, I mean, and all these are, you know, sort of substantive things that are important to talk about, and Donald Trump addressed the generals. And you know, a lot of the rhetoric is sort of his normal kind of campaign rhetoric. So on the one hand, I am kind of puzzled that they would choose to bring them all together to do that, but on the other hand, maybe they are just really intent on sending the message that the woke thing in the military is over and that they have serious determination to end it. And so knowing that Trump does things for a reason, that's my guess is that they are not just trying to rhetorically send a message to the generals, but rather that they are saying it is time for culture to change, and we will put the people in place to change the culture.

MAST: I think we might file this one under “too little, too late” … the news of New York mayor Eric Adams’s ending his bid for reelection … In June he’d lost the Democratic primary to Socialist Zohran Mamdani … and not only Adams but the former governor … Andrew Cuomo … decided to mount independent campaigns. At this point Mamdani seems like a lock.

He painted this as a fight that goes back to Trump–with him as the one who will do the fighting. Here he is on CNN:

MAMDANI: Whether we're speaking about Adams or we're speaking about Cuomo we're speaking about supposed leaders who are willing to put their own personal ambition before the needs of the people they're supposed to serve. New Yorkers are right now under attack from an authoritarian administration in Washington. Donald Trump has ushered through legislation that will throw them off their health care, take SNAP benefits away from them all in service of the largest wealth transfer this country has seen. And instead of fighting back against that vision, instead of fighting for New Yorkers, these politicians are looking to get on the phone with Donald Trump.

So is Mamdani a lock or do you see a scenario where he loses this?

BAKER: His chances are pretty good. So even with Adams leaving, his name will still be on the ballot. So if there are Die Hard Adams voters, they'll probably still vote for him. You also have Sliwa, who is of the famed Guardians of the subways in New York,

EICHER: Guardian Angels.

BAKER: Guardian angels, exactly as the Republican candidate. And I don't think he's going anywhere. You probably would have needed to have been left with Mamdani and Cuomo, for Cuomo to really have a chance to win. So I think the chances are good that he's going to win, but honestly, I think that his time as mayor, assuming he has it, is sort of doomed to fail. And the reason I say that is is that the mayor does not necessarily have the power to do a lot of the things that he wants to do. Some of those powers reside in the New York legislature and governor, rather than in the mayor. But the other thing is, these sort of very left wing governments have not worked out well in New York City. We may recall that the reason New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani in the early 90s was because things were bad, and had been bad for quite a while with these very left wing mayors. And so it took a Giuliani two terms and then being followed by Mike Bloomberg, who in many ways, did the same things that Giuliani had done to really restore order to the city and to help it prosper. So I'm kind of in the camp that George Will is in thinking that it will be good for people to have this kind of socialist mayor, to have a bad experience and to sort of want to get that taste out of their mouths.

EICHER: All right, Hunter, a big piece in The Wall Street Journal on pastor and author Douglas Wilson. He recently planted a church down the street from the capital, a C.R.E.C. Church, his denomination … Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. In the piece, Pastor Wilson said he can summarize Christian nationalism as quoting here, “we should stop making God angry.” Now, this is good advice at all times. But he also says that the U.S. was a Christian nation at its founding, but now we are a backslidden Christian republic. Now, you've written about this in your recent book, Post-Liberal Protestants. And I think it's timely in a year when we're looking ahead to the country’s 250th birthday … our quarter mill … what’s your assessment?

BAKER: So first of all, I just want to say that I think that Doug Wilson is an incredibly interesting figure in American Christianity. He has written probably millions of words in various books and blog posts and things of that nature. I know him a little bit. I have been out to Moscow, Idaho, and have given a talk before, and I have seen the interesting impact that he and his projects have had on that city, and now he is becoming still more prominent. We were just talking about Pete Hegseth. Pete Hegseth is tied to Wilson's denomination. So you see that kind of spreading influence. I would disagree with his characterization of Christian nationalism as not making God angry. You know, in my view, as a sort of a Church / State expert, I think that Christian nationalism refers to or returned to the established churches of centuries past, where basically the church and the government are kind of united as entities. Nevertheless, I think that we are in a moment. I think that there are significant numbers of people who are interested in kind of an amped up, more ambitious kind of a public Christianity, and he, to some extent, is the face of that.

MAST: So we hear the term Christian nationalism all the time … and usually in a pejorative way. You’re a political scientist, how should it be defined … properly?

BAKER: Yeah, so, so Stephen Wolfe, a few years ago, wrote this book, The Case for Christian Nationalism. Political Scientist, got his PhD at LSU, and that Canon Press published that book, The Case for Christian Nationalism. But Stephen is calling for a return to the time when Church and State were unified, sort of the same way as Luther is Germany, or Calvin's Geneva. You know, those sorts of things. And so I think that it's a mistake to sort of say, well, Christian Nationalism is just sort of wanting to have Christian values in our society. I think, I think it entails something much bigger than that. Now, as a Baptist, I think that's a mistake. And part of the reason that I think that is, is that if we look at the part of the world that had these establishments, that's really Western Europe, right? And Western Europe is now roughly the most secular place on Earth, you know, I think that England is a great example of Christian nationalism, and you end up with a church that, in my view, is sort of neutered and ineffective, whereas in the US, where we have a, you know, pretty serious institutional separation of church and state, the church is far more vital and influential than in those places. So I think that the Free Church is a better idea.

NICK: Hunter Baker is a political scientist and provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, thank you.

BAKER: Thank you.

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