'Humiliating smackdown': Gaetz's failed nomination was early ‘gross test’ for Senate

The collapse of former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination means the Senate passed an early, “gross test” about two months before Donald Trump makes his return to the White House, according to a New York Times columnist.

And that’s cause for celebration, albeit a tiny one, where she told readers that the doomed nomination “didn’t last even a full Scaramucci,” Michelle Cottle wrote in a Thursday op-ed.

“Talk about a quick and humiliating smackdown,” Cottle wrote. But, she added, “this could not have happened to a more deserving guy.”

“For those who care about checks and balances, Gaetzgate was about so much more than the political fate of a proud poster boy for arrested development who has the morals of a coked-up bonobo," Cottle wrote. "Trump’s decision to put him forward was an early, gross test for the president-elect’s entire Senate team."

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The Senate has been moving in a “Trumpier” direction, but the change is not yet total, while the Republican House conference has been completely MAGAfied, Cottle argued.

However, the columnist wrote that Trump’s second term strategy to command authority over Republican senators may only be just beginning.

“His M.O. is to relentlessly pressure-test people and institutions," Cottle wrote. "Those who don’t crumble at first are hit again. And again. The goal is to shatter the resisters’ spines, one vertebra at a time if necessary, so that they don’t just bow before him but rather collapse in a gelatinous blob."

She concluded by telling readers in a relieved sense that there are still Republican senators “who value the chamber’s role as an independent power center.”

“With Gaetz, the MAGA king was watching to see if there was a line that his Senate subjects would not yet cross,” Cottle said.