The last time a president had such ugly numbers was in the fall of 2008, as the Great Recession got underway under George W. Bush. Mind you, Bush had once enjoyed approval numbers up around 86 percent, in the wake of 9/11, according to the Pew Research Center, while Donald J. Trump “is the only president not to register a 50-percent job approval rating at any point in his presidency since Gallup began measuring presidential job approval in 1938.” So why is Long Island’s Republican delegation in Congress still clinging so tightly to the president’s soiled coattails?
Long Island is represented in Congress by two Democrats and two Republicans. On the G.O.P. side, Andrew Garbarino’s District 2 covers most of the South Shore west of Southampton; Nick LaLota’s cleaver-shaped District 1 runs from Huntington to Montauk Point. The Democrats are Tom Suozzi of Glen Cove and Laura Gillen in Garden City.
For Mr. LaLota and Mr. Garbarino, continuing to toe the Trump party line makes sense from strictly a numbers point of view, because their districts — unlike the country as a whole — are staunchly red. Here in District 1, President Trump carried the last election by 54 percent over Joe Biden’s 44.
The question Long Island voters must be asking now is: Do our representatives in Congress have the strength of character to break with President Trump on the war in Iran?
Americans should never forget what happened this week. Our duly elected president threatened genocide, posting the following on social media on Tuesday morning:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. . . .”
Then, the president swiveled like a madman from threatening genocide in the morning to declaring victory on Tuesday evening, when he announced he had accepted a 10-point plan proposed by Iran, that — the opposite of “Complete and Total Regime Change” — would leave the retrenched Iranian government in a more powerful position than it held before the bombing began, with sanctions removed, frozen assets released, and the U.S. military withdrawn from the Middle East.
If ever there was a moment for a member of Congress to make a stand based not on poll numbers but on common decency and in the best interests of the nation, it is now. Representatives LaLota and Garbarino should join Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia in rebuking, not enabling, the mad wannabe emperor in the White House.