Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump has already intimidated media companies, law firms, and universities into submission to his will. He is working on sports teams, as we described at length on Tuesday. Now lobbyists think it is their turn.
Federal lobbyists exist to get favors from the government for their clients. It is basically legal bribery. The only difference from regular garden-variety bribery is that the bribe goes into the congress critters' campaign account instead of his or her personal bank account. For small favors, getting a congressman to insert a line in a spreadsheet in the budget might not be difficult and might fly under the radar. Congress critters don't cost much. But for anything big, Trump is going to see it and ask what's in it for him. This makes the lobby shops very unwilling to incur his wrath.
All of them have noticed that Microsoft is now Trump's enemy because it hired former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who led the prosecution of Trump for stealing classified documents and storing them in his bathroom. That's a real insult to the classified documents. They deserved to be stored in the grand dining room. When the lobby shops are looking to hire someone, the first question the shop now asks is: "What Republican can we hire?" The second is: "Is he MAGA enough?" Moderate Republicans are not welcome.
The problem is that lobby shops have traditionally been nonpartisan, which is to say, opportunistic. They have contacts with both Democrats and Republicans and will work for any client who wants to hire them. Now, some of them are having to hire very MAGA Republicans to please Trump and get access to him. The trouble is if a Democrat is elected president in 2028, no company will want to hire them because the president and other Democrats will see them as the devil's spawn. That means hire MAGA people now and you may get satisfied clients until Jan. 20, 2029, but then the company will be out of business if a Democrat wins. Don't hire MAGA people now then forget about any major customers starting immediately. It means that henceforth, lobby shops will have to be partisan and will continue to exist only as long as their party is in power. Getting rid of the lobbyists might not actually be a bad thing, but would probably just mean every time the White House changed parties, a new batch of lobby firms would start up from scratch.
The situation is similar for pollsters, but not as bad. No Democratic politician would ever consider hiring Fabrizio Ward (Trump's pollster) and no Republican would ever hire David Binder (Kamala Harris' pollster). Most political pollsters work for either Republicans or Democrats, but not both. This is why many of the nonpartisan polls published are from small colleges: They are not looking to be hired by candidates. The commercial pollsters are. That is their bread and butter. Also for pollsters, in most races, there is a Democrat running and a Republican running. It doesn't matter who the incumbent is. Both candidates need a pollster, so there is always work, no matter who the president is. That is no longer true for lobbyists. (V)