Not only is the GOP at all levels at one another’s throats, their language suggests they’re acting at cross purposes.

With a government shutdown looming at midnight tonight, the Republicans who now seem to have total control of the means through which a shutdown might be averted (remember Joe Biden?) are at one another’s throats. Not only is the GOP at all levels at one another’s throats, their language suggests they’re acting at cross purposes.

I align myself with NR’s institutional view that the rats’ nest billed as a continuing resolution “deserved to die.” Elon Musk and his DOGE team were right to react with horror to what was really, in form and function, an omnibus spending package. His emphatic aversion to that monstrosity does betray a lack of familiarity with this unfortunately common practice since regular order has fallen out of fashion in Congress, but that aversion is certainly justified.

I don’t share Musk’s apparent belief that a government shutdown would be preferable to a clean CR (which is also NR’s institutional outlook), but the defection of dozens of Republican representatives last night showed that the GOP doesn’t have the votes to pass its own clean CR. That, not Mike Johnson’s well-guarded RINO sensibilities, likely explains why we were presented with that distasteful “minibus” in the first place.

Despite my disagreements with Team DOGE over tactics, however, its focus on reducing America’s spending obligations is most welcome. It has been a long time since we had an institution backed by Donald Trump’s imprimatur that was committed to real debt reduction. But Trump himself doesn’t seem to be on the same page.

“There was little evidence Trump cared much about the CR” before Musk and company launched a social-media crusade against it, Politico reported on Thursday. “We’re told that Trump’s team was aware of the contours of the deal and did not object. It was not a matter of debate during Saturday’s Army-Navy game discussion, which focused mostly on reconciliation. And we’re also told Republicans passed off the details of the deal to those close with Trump.”

If Politico’s reporting is accurate, Trump was backed into the anti-CR posture he belatedly adopted. It was then that the president-elect sought to regain the initiative and recoup some agency by introducing the notion that the GOP should suspend the debt ceiling for the entirety of his presidency. We can safely assume that Trump isn’t seeking to eliminate this check on runaway federal spending because he wants to see less of it.

“The request for a debt ceiling hike blindsided many on Capitol Hill,” Politico added. Trump had privately floated a debt-ceiling hike before, the dispatch added, but Johnson balked at the proposal because “he knows any debt ceiling increase would mean major concessions to Democrats.” Those private talks have now spilled out into the open with almost no time left to secure an agreement along the terms envisioned by the incoming administration.

The congressional GOP, to the extent that it remains even vestigially committed to debt reduction, isn’t going to give in to even a short-term debt limit extension without spending offsets. Trump would need Democrats’ help, and that won’t come for free. If we follow the logic, we would find ourselves back where we started — with a messy “minibus” crammed with Democratic priorities to buy Democratic votes.

We’re now at an impasse, but Trump officials and allies have not formed a united front. If DOGE is focused on reducing spending and Trump seeks to lift one of the few procedural mechanisms that has a reliable track record of compelling lawmakers to pare back federal spending. Their rhetoric may sound similar — maximalist Trumpian bombast about the end of the country as we know it at the hands of traitors and whatnot — but Trump and Musk are operating at cross purposes.

Republicans in Congress will have to sort it all out, but the confusion at the top has filtered down into the ranks. Now, everyone is confused. It might, however, be useful for the congressional GOP to recognize the fundamental dividing line here: If Musk and company are genuinely invested in putting America on a sounder fiscal trajectory, Donald Trump is not and never was.

Hope that helps.