The Uni-Party Grift: How the Establishment Would Rather Sabotage the Midterms Than Actually Deliver
The Dirty Secret of the Republican Establishment
The only thing Congressional Republicans hate more than losing their minority is winning a majority under a president who expects them to deliver.
Oh, they want majoritiesthe committee chairmanships, the gavels, the press conferences. But they don’t want to govern. They don’t want a strong executive who demands results. They don’t want to actually repeal Obamacare or secure the border or drain the swamp, because the swamp is where they live.
What they want is the comfortable minority. The permanent opposition. The posture of resistance without the burden of results.
In the minority, you can rage against the machine while collecting checks from it. You can give fiery speeches about fiscal responsibility while the other party takes the heat for spending. You can promise your voters the moon while delivering nothing, because you don’t have the votes, you see, and isn’t that convenient?
The lobbyists understand this. The defense contractors understand this. The pharmaceutical companies and the Wall Street banks and the foreign policy think tanks understand this. They pay more when Republicans are in the minority, because that’s when Republicans are hungriest, and most pliable.
A strong president who actually expects legislation? Who demands results? Who threatens to primary the do-nothings and expose the grift? That’s the real enemy. Not the Democrats. Not the progressives. The enemy is any Republican who might actually do somethingand thereby reveal that the rest of them have been doing nothing for decades.
This is why they’ll blow up the 2026 midterms. This is why they’ll sabotage the next presidential election. Not despite their self-interestbecause of it.
The Uni-Party Revealed
Last week, I wrote about Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, the scriptwriter who helped fabricate the Iraq War intelligence that killed 640,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,500 American soldiers. I traced the hierarchy of lies: the Neocon puppet masters who designed the policy, the pawns who executed it, the scriptwriters who packaged the deception.
But there’s a layer I didn’t fully address: the Congressional enablers. The senators and representatives who voted for the Iraq War resolution, who funded every escalation, who held no one accountable, and who are now positioning themselves as the principled opposition to a president who threatens their comfortable arrangement.
They aren’t Democrats. They aren’t Republicans. They’re the Uni-Party, the permanent establishment that transcends elections, survives administrations, and ensures that nothing ever fundamentally changes.
The Uni-Party doesn’t care which nominal party controls Congress. It cares that Congressremains captured by the same interests regardless of the letter after the names. Defense contractors get their appropriations. Pharmaceutical companies get their patent protections. Wall Street gets its bailouts. And the forever wars continue, because the forever wars are the point, the permanent justification for permanent budgets and permanent power.
A disruptive president threatens this arrangement. A strong executive who bypasses the bureaucracy, negotiates directly with foreign leaders, and demands that Congress actually deliver on its promises, that’s an existential threat to everyone who profits from the status quo.
So they’ll destroy him. Not because he’s wrong. Because he’s effective.
Robert Gates: The Template for Managed Decline
To understand what’s happening in Congress right now, you must first understand Robert Gates, because Gates wrote the playbook that Susan Collins and Mitch McConnell are following today.
Gates is the archetype of the Uni-Party manager: the man who serves both parties because he serves neither, who executes the consensus regardless of which nominal faction holds power, who extends catastrophes just long enough to make them respectable.
The résumé: CIA Director under Bush 41. Secretary of Defense under both Bush 43 and Obama. The only Pentagon chief in history retained by a president of the opposing party. Eight presidents served. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. Now a principal at Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, selling access and influence to corporations and foreign governments who need doors opened in Washington.
The reality: Gates supported the 2003 Iraq invasion built on fabricated intelligence. Once installed at the Pentagon in late 2006, he championed the Iraq surge, extending and deepening an occupation that had already become a sectarian bloodbath. He pushed Obama toward the 2009 Afghanistan surge, adding 30,000 troops to a war with no achievable objective. He admitted to withholding military options from the White House to steer presidential decisions. He undermined withdrawal timelines, telling Congress that presidential deadlines were merely “appraisal” dates.
And for this (for extending catastrophic wars, for manipulating the commander-in-chief, for ensuring that nothing ever fundamentally changed) he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
That medal wasn’t a reward for success. It was a reward for reliability. Gates could be counted on to keep the wars going, to keep the budgets flowing, to keep the permanent establishment in control regardless of what voters wanted or presidents promised.
The hypocrisy: Gates has spent a decade calling disruptive leaders “unfit,” “beyond repair,” and “stubbornly uninformed”. He savaged Joe Biden for being “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy issue”, yet Biden opposed the Iraq surge and favored a smaller counter-terrorism footprint in Afghanistan, positions that proved far wiser than Gates’s maximalist approach.
Meanwhile, Gates praised Hillary Clinton as an “outstanding Secretary of State”, even after personally witnessing her admit that her opposition to the 2007 Iraq surge “had been political because she was facing [Obama] in the Iowa primary”. Clinton confessed to taking a position on a life-and-death military decision purely for political advantage. Gates’s response? Effusive praise.
This is the bipartisan brand. Attack those who threaten the consensus. Protect those who serve it. And never, ever acknowledge that your own record is written in the blood of hundreds of thousands.
Now watch the same playbook execute in real time on Capitol Hill.
The Scorched-Earth Senate: Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell
The Gates template has migrated to Congress. The same pattern (serve the Uni-Party, extend the catastrophes, then position yourself as the principled critic of anyone who threatens the arrangement) is playing out in the Senate cloakrooms as the 2026 midterms approach.
Susan Collins: The Perennial “Moderate”
On January 8, Senator Susan Collins of Maine joined four other Republicans to vote with Democrats on a war powers resolution limiting military action in Venezuela. The response from the White House was immediate: Collins and the others “should never hold office again”.
Collins dismissed the criticism. “I guess this means he would prefer Governor Mills or somebody else” to win her seat, she told reporters.
This is the Collins playbook, the same playbook Gates perfected. Position yourself as the thoughtful moderate. Wring your hands about “congressional authority.” Cast the occasional defiant vote, then fold when it matters. Collins voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. She voted to acquit in both impeachment trials. She has delivered for the establishment on every consequential question while cultivating the appearance of independence on symbolic ones.
Collins’s voting alignment with Republican colleagues has dropped to approximately 36% this year, lower than any other senator. She opposed Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary. She criticized Greenland policy. She is positioning herself as the “reasonable Republican” who can appeal to Maine independents while the national party burns.
But where was this concern for “congressional authority” during the Iraq War? Where was the principled stand against executive overreach when Bush and Cheney were fabricating intelligence to justify an invasion that would kill hundreds of thousands? Collins voted for the Iraq War resolution. She enabled the catastrophe. And now she wants credit for questioning a Venezuela operation that captured a dictator without a single American casualty.
Gates extended wars for years while positioning himself as the prudent manager. Collins enables catastrophes for decades while positioning herself as the principled moderate. Same template. Same grift.
Lisa Murkowski: The Alaskan Exception
Murkowski follows the same script. She voted against Hegseth. She voted for the Venezuela resolution. She has “openly expressed her criticisms” while carefully maintaining her standing with the establishment that protects her.
Murkowski won reelection in 2022 despite a primary challenger. She knows her political survival depends on the “moderate Republican” brand, the bipartisan credential that allows her to collect support from Democrats and independents while the national party takes the heat.
But Murkowski is not a moderate. She is a creature of the permanent establishment, the same establishment that produced the Iraq War, the Afghanistan quagmire, the Libya intervention. Her “independence” is always carefully calibrated to protect that establishment while appearing to stand apart from it.
Mitch McConnell: The Institutionalist Who Built the Machine
And then there’s McConnell, the former Senate Majority Leader who spent decades building the Republican machine, now positioning himself as its conscience.
On January 14, McConnell took to the Senate floor to deliver “one of the most pointed critiques” of administration foreign policy. He warned that action in Greenland would represent “an unprecedented act of strategic self-sabotage.” He compared it unfavorably to the Afghanistan withdrawal.
The establishment swooned. McConnell the statesman. McConnell the voice of reason. McConnell defending the sacred NATO alliance.
But where was this McConnell during the Iraq War? Where was the voice of reason when the Bush administration was fabricating intelligence and lying America into a conflict that would cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives?
McConnell voted for the Iraq War resolution. He supported every surge, every escalation, every extension of the forever wars. He enabled the neoconservative project for two decades. And now (at 84 years old, with his legacy on the line) he wants to be remembered as the principled voice who warned against excess.
As Bloomberg noted, Republicans who “speak most clearly” against current policy “also tend to be near the end of their careers and thus have less reason to fear political retaliation”. Conscience as a retirement plan. Principle as a legacy project.
Gates writes memoirs attacking everyone who threatened the consensus. McConnell gives floor speeches warning about “self-sabotage.” Same template. Same grift. Same Uni-Party.
The January Rebellion: Seventeen House Republicans Show Their Cards
The Senate votes were just the beginning. On January 8, the same day Collins and company defied the White House on Venezuela, the House saw its own rebellion.
Seventeen House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a three-year extension of Obamacare subsidies, defying both the Speaker and the White House. The bill passed 230-196, with Republicans using a discharge petition, a procedural mechanism that wrests control of the floor from leadership, to force the vote.
The rebels included Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, and other “moderates” from swing districts who see the political writing on the wall. They know their seats are at risk. They know the generic ballot has swung nearly 8 points toward Democrats. They know that 21 House Republicans won their seats in 2024 with margins of less than 8 points.
So they are creating distance. They are building the “independent” brand. They are positioning themselves as the reasonable Republicans who can survive the coming wave.
But here’s what they won’t tell you: these are the same Republicans who campaigned for a decade on repealing Obamacare. The same Republicans who voted dozens of times to gut the Affordable Care Act when it was symbolic. The same Republicans who only discovered their concern for healthcare affordability when their own seats were threatened.
This is not principle. This is self-preservation dressed up as moderation. This is the Gates template applied to the House: enable catastrophe, then position yourself as the reasonable voice when accountability approaches.
The Minority Premium: Why Losing Pays Better
Follow the money and the logic becomes obvious.
When Republicans hold the majority and the White House, they’re expected to produce. Their donors want tax cuts. Their voters want border security. Their president wants legislation. The pressure is relentless, the scrutiny intense, and the excuses harder to manufacture.
But in the minority? Paradise.
In the minority, you can vote against every Democratic bill and claim you’re fighting the good fight. You can give speeches about constitutional principles you ignored for years. You can fundraise off outrage, send us money to stop the radical left! while knowing that nothing you do will actually change anything.
The lobbyists love this. A minority Republican desperate for campaign cash is a compliant Republican. A majority Republican facing primary pressure from a strong president is a dangerous variable.
Consider the defense industry. When Republicans control everything, there’s pressure to actually reform procurement, cut waste, deliver results. When Republicans are in the minority, they simply vote for whatever defense appropriations the Democrats propose, often more than Democrats wanted, and collect their consulting contracts and board seats when they retire.
General Dynamics doesn’t care which party runs Congress. Raytheon doesn’t care. Lockheed Martin doesn’t care. They care that the appropriations flow and the wars continue. And that happens more reliably when Congress is gridlocked, when no one is truly in charge, when the permanent bureaucracy runs on autopilot while elected officials perform outrage for the cameras.
James Mattis understood this. Within months of leaving the Pentagon, he rejoined the board of General Dynamics, a position he’d held before becoming Defense Secretary. The revolving door spins. The money flows. And the Managers who extend the wars get rewarded while the disruptors get destroyed.
The Boot-Licking Economy
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about Congressional power: it’s worth more when you’re losing.
A majority Republican facing a strong president has limited options. Vote with the president and you’re a rubber stamp. Vote against and you’re a traitor to your own party. The donors are satisfied but not desperate. The lobbyists have access but limited leverage. The grift continues, but at reduced margins.
A minority Republican facing a Democratic president is in paradise. Every vote is a press release. Every speech is a fundraising email. The donors are terrified and generous. The lobbyists need you to slow things down, block nominations, gum up the works, and they’ll pay handsomely for the service.
But the real premium comes from being a minority Republican who enabled the Democratic takeover. The Collins-Murkowski axis. The “reasonable” Republicans who can be counted on to defect when it matters, to provide bipartisan cover for Democratic priorities, to keep the Uni-Party functioning regardless of nominal control.
These are the Republicans the establishment truly values. Not the firebrands who might actually change something. Not the populists who threaten the consensus. The reliable ones. The ones who understand that the real constituency isn’t voters, it’s the permanent establishment that will still be in Washington long after the voters have moved on.
Their boots get licked more in the minority because that’s when they’re most useful to the people doing the licking.
The Wilkerson Parallel: Scriptwriters and Enablers
In my piece on Lawrence Wilkerson, I described the hierarchy that produced the Iraq catastrophe:
- Puppet masters: The Kagans, Kristols, Wolfowitzes, the think-tank architects who designed the neoconservative project
- Pawns: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, the principals who approved and executed
- Scriptwriters: Wilkerson and his ilk, the staff functionaries who assembled the lies
- Managers: Gates and the career professionals who extended the catastrophes for years
But there’s a fifth category I didn’t name: the Congressional Enablers. The senators and representatives who voted for the Iraq War resolution, who funded every surge, who held no oversight hearings, who asked no hard questions, and who now position themselves as the principled opposition to anyone who threatens to upset the arrangement.
Collins voted for the Iraq War. McConnell voted for the Iraq War. Nearly every “reasonable Republican” now wringing their hands about executive overreach voted to authorize the greatest strategic catastrophe in modern American history, and then voted to fund it, year after year, while hundreds of thousands died.
Where was their concern for “congressional authority” then? Where were the war powers resolutions? Where was the principled stand against executive overreach when Bush and Cheney were fabricating intelligence and torturing prisoners and warrantless wiretapping American citizens?
They were silent. They were compliant. They were reliable.
And now (after enabling decades of catastrophic war, after funding the forever conflicts that enriched defense contractors and think tanks and consulting firms) they want credit for opposing a president who is actually trying to end wars rather than start them.
The Congressional Enablers are not separate from the Wilkerson hierarchy. They are its foundation. The puppet masters design the policies. The pawns approve them. The scriptwriters package the lies. The Managers extend the catastrophes. And the Congressional Enablers fund the whole enterprise while performing oversight they never actually conduct.
The 2026 Calculation: Sabotage as Strategy
The numbers tell the story. Approval among independents has cratered to 30 percent. The generic ballot has swung 8 points toward Democrats. Twenty-one House Republicans won their seats in 2024 with margins of less than 8 points.
Nancy Mace says Republicans haven’t “done enough” to hold the House. She’s right, but not in the way she means.
Republicans haven’t “done enough” because they don’t want to. A wipeout in 2026 serves the establishment’s interests:
- It discredits the populist faction. See? We told you this approach was too extreme. Now let the adults take over.
- It restores the comfortable minority. Back to fundraising off outrage, voting against Democratic bills, and collecting lobbyist checks without the burden of actually governing.
- It positions the Uni-Party for 2028. With the populist experiment “discredited,” the establishment can reclaim the presidential nomination for one of their own, a Gates-approved, donor-friendly, war-ready candidate who won’t threaten the consensus.
- It protects Congressional power from executive disruption. A strong president demands results. A weakened president (or better yet, a Democratic president) allows Congress to return to its natural state: permanent gridlock, permanent fundraising, permanent irrelevance masked as importance.
This is why Susan Collins creates distance over Venezuela. This is why McConnell warns about Greenland. This is why seventeen House Republicans defect on Obamacare subsidies they campaigned against for a decade. They’re not breaking with their party, they’re protecting their party from the threat of actually having to govern.
The Uni-Party Endgame: Managed Decline Forever
What does the Uni-Party actually want? Not victory (victory requires delivering results, and results threaten the status quo. Not defeat) total defeat would discredit them entirely.
They want managed decline. The permanent twilight. The endless negotiation between nominal factions that never produces fundamental change. Wars that continue indefinitely. Budgets that grow automatically. A bureaucracy that runs on autopilot while elected officials provide theater.
This is what “bipartisanship” actually means: the agreement between nominal Republicans and nominal Democrats that nothing will ever fundamentally change. Tax rates will fluctuate within acceptable bounds. Regulations will be tweaked but never eliminated. Wars will be “ended” and then quietly continued under different names. And the permanent establishment (the defense contractors, the think tanks, the consulting firms, the intelligence agencies) will remain in control regardless of which party holds nominal power.
A disruptive president threatens this arrangement. A strong executive who bypasses the bureaucracy, negotiates directly with foreign leaders, purges the captured agencies, and demands that Congress deliver on its promises, that’s not just a political opponent. That’s an existential threat to everyone who profits from managed decline.
So they’ll destroy him. Republicans and Democrats together. The Uni-Party in action.
Collins and Murkowski will provide the Senate votes. The seventeen House defectors will provide the procedural chaos. McConnell will provide the elder statesman gravitas. Gates and Bolton will provide the intellectual cover. And when the midterms produce a wipeout, as they’re designed to, the establishment will emerge from the rubble claiming vindication.
We told you this approach was too extreme. We told you this president was unfit. Now let the adults take over.
The adults who gave us Iraq. The adults who gave us Afghanistan. The adults who gave us Libya and Syria and the 2014 Ukraine coup. The adults who have been catastrophically wrong about every major foreign policy question for sixty years but who never lose their credentials, their consulting contracts, or their green room invitations.
Why They Fear Effectiveness More Than Failure
The tell is what they attack.
They don’t attack policy failures, the forever wars, the open borders, the hollowed-out manufacturing base. They’ve enabled all of that for decades. They attack effectiveness. They attack results.
A president who actually secures the border? “Authoritarian.” A president who actually negotiates with adversaries? “Compromised.” A president who actually demands that allies pay their share? “Destroying the alliance.” A president who actually tries to end a war? “Abandoning our partners.”
The crime is never failure. The establishment has infinite tolerance for failure, as long as the failure is managed by credentialed professionals following established procedures. The crime is success that threatens the consensus.
This is why Gates attacks leaders who pursue direct diplomacy while never apologizing for the wars he extended. This is why Bolton rages about “institutional norms” while advocating bombing half the planet. This is why the Congressional Republicans who funded two decades of catastrophic war suddenly discover their concern for “congressional authority” when a president tries to end one.
They don’t fear incompetence. They fear competence applied outside their control.
The Choice
The 2026 midterms are not a referendum on policy. They are a referendum on whether the permanent establishment will recapture control of the Republican Party, and by extension, the entire American political system.
The Uni-Party is betting that a midterm wipeout will discredit the populist faction, restore the comfortable minority, and position the establishment for a 2028 restoration. They are willing to lose Congress to Democrats if that’s what it takes to destroy the threat of a strong executive who might actually change something.
Collins and Murkowski are creating distance. McConnell is burnishing his legacy. The House defectors are building their “moderate” brands. Gates is collecting speaking fees. And somewhere in the background, the Kagans and Kristols and permanent establishment are preparing for the restoration, the return of managed decline, forever wars, and bipartisan consensus that serves everyone except the American people.
Don’t let them tell you this is about principle. It’s about power, specifically, the power of the permanent establishment to remain in control regardless of what voters want or elections produce.
Don’t let them tell you this is about constitutional concerns. These are the same people who enabled warrantless wiretapping, torture programs, and fabricated intelligence to justify illegal wars. Their sudden concern for institutional norms is performance, not principle.
Don’t let them tell you this is about the good of the country. The country they serve is not the one you live in. Their country is the green rooms and the consulting firms and the defense contractor boards and the think-tank sinecures. Their country is the Uni-Party, and it has no borders, no voters, and no accountability.
The Congressional Republicans would rather lose than win with a strong president who threatens their arrangement. They would rather return to the comfortable minority than govern effectively under executive pressure. They would rather see Democrats control Congress than see the permanent establishment lose its grip on the Republican Party.
That’s the calculation. That’s the endgame. That’s the Uni-Party in action.
And if you don’t see it now, you will in November, when the same people who enabled Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria emerge from the midterm wreckage to explain that this is why we need adults in charge.
The adults who filled the graves. The adults who burned the trillions. The adults who have been wrong about everything for sixty years but who never, ever lose their seat at the table.
Scott Ortkiese writes on geopolitics, institutional corruption, and the permanent failures of America’s foreign-policy establishment.
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