WASHINGTON (AP) – In Trump’s Washington, traditions are frail and civility a novelty. But one custom that is hanging on – tattered and tenuously – is an unwritten rule: Don’t work too hard to inflict political harm on your Senate colleagues.
This election season is testing lawmakers’ commitment to the fading courtesy. As many Democrats face tough re-election races in states won by President Donald Trump, their Republican colleagues face a choice about how fervently to try to defeat their fellow senators.
The question has bubbled up recently as GOP senators have indicated their intention to pull their punches against Democratic incumbents from their home states. In hot Senate races in Indiana and Florida, Republican senators have suggested they might not go to the mat for the Republican candidates. Sen. Bob Corker raised eyebrows Sunday with a twist on the rule – issuing a startlingly tepid endorsement of Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the House lawmaker running against Democrat Phil Bredesen for Corker’s seat in Tennessee.
“I’m not going to campaign against him, but I’m supporting our nominee,” Corker said on CNN.
There was a time such a statement might not have made news. Old-timers say there used to be a hard and fast rule not to meddle in other Senate races lest you sour relationships in the clubby Senate, then, as now, loaded with politicians blessed by long memories and thin skins.