Bill Cassidy looked like a 'broken shell of a man' on the Senate floor: ex-GOP insider

Former Republican strategist Tim Miller had some choice words for Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) after he announced he would be the deciding vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general.

All of this, he noted for MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace, stems from the GOP's utter inability to say no to President Donald Trump, driven by their voters continuing to stick with him in large numbers.

This differs somewhat from former President George W. Bush's second term, said Miller, because "when Bush's numbers went down after Katrina, as the war started to turn, as the economy started to get bad in the second term, they went down kind of with everybody, like Democrats went from 12 percent support to two and independents from 50 to 20 and Republicans from 90 to 70. Like it went down across the board."

While some Trump supporters have peeled off, it's not nearly to the same extent with "the core MAGA base," said Miller. "And so you have these candidates who I do think are scared of ... if they try to get away from him too much, then they'll doom themselves, if they stick with him too much, they'll doom themselves."

None of this, however, explains Cassidy's vote, added Miller, since he was already ousted by Trump in his own primary and has nothing left to lose.

"Cassidy today to me looked like a man that had lost all self-respect, a completely broken shell of a man," said Miller. And, he added, "the quote that really stuck with me from the speech was, before you even explain why he's going to confirm Blanche, he was like, people are going to criticize me for this. They always do. And he's like, he's doing this woe is me thing on the Senate floor."

In other words, said Miller, his attitude was "oh, these guys always, no matter what I do, I'm gonna get criticized. I'm gonna get yelled at. So why do the right thing? Why not just do the easy thing?" This way at least, he can avoid angering anyone at the "Baton Rouge country club" and can go lobby for GOP-aligned corporations next year.

"Is the juice worth the squeeze? Maybe not," added Miller. "Or do they have the respect of backbone to do it, the intestinal fortitude to do it? Not really."

- YouTube www.youtube.com