TWO SPINELESS PARTIES ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE OWNED BY TRUMP

After a couple of days when the party looked tough and forthright, we're learning that many Democrats would rather be spineless:

Senate Democrats are weighing whether to avoid an all-out war to block President Donald Trump's upcoming Supreme Court pick, instead considering delaying that battle for a future nomination that could shift the ideological balance of the court, sources say.

Democrats privately discussed their tactics during a closed-door retreat in West Virginia last week. And a number of Democrats are trying to persuade liberal firebrands to essentially let Republicans confirm Trump's pick after a vigorous confirmation process -- since Trump is likely to name a conservative to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

Or, in other words:

Breaking: Democrats considering allowing Trump SCOTUS pick so that after the dictatorship & nuclear winter, GOP won't block Dem picks.

— William K. Wolfrum (@Wolfrum) January 31, 2017

But the Republicans have also been owned by the Trump administration:

Senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee helped Donald Trump's top aides draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, but the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed, according to multiple sources involved in the process....

The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Trump was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

We know that congressional Republicans weren't consulted on the Muslim ban:

President Trump’s temporary ban on refugees and other foreigners has significantly deepened fissures in his already fragile relationship with congressional Republicans, as GOP leaders on Capitol Hill complained angrily Monday that they were not consulted before the order was issued.

At least a dozen key GOP lawmakers and aides said Trump’s order took them by surprise, even as the White House insisted that it collaborated with Congress.

But using their staffers and legally requiring those staffers not to inform the leadership? That's rubbing their faces in their own powerlessness.

There should be consequences for this. But there won't be. Trump would sign those sweet, sweet tax cuts for the rich into law even if Republican members of Congress challenged him on this, but they won't. It's just not in Republicans' nature. In the past, they've genuflected before Rush Limbaugh and before the Tea Party, and Limbaugh and the 'baggers weren't even president.

Eliot Cohen, who was in the State Department in the George W. Bush administration, predicts that the Trump administration will eventually "fail" because, among other things, "even the most timid senator sooner or later will say 'enough.'" I don't believe it. Members of Congress from both parties appear willing to let Trump walk all over them. Why would that ever change?