“________ yells at Wolf Blitzer over _________” is a headline that will always draw my bloggy interest. It’s a feelgood story, however those blanks might be filled in.

I must say as a Trump critic that it’s been immensely enjoyable these past few days watching all of the hawkish establishment GOPers who tried to make nice with him thinking they’d eventually coopt him on policy get their reward. Little Marco is even glummer today than he was last night:

I hope we who have supported this administrations initiatives over the last two years can persuade the President to choose a different direction. But we must also fulfill our constitutional duty to conduct oversight over the policies of the executive branch. 2/2

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 20, 2018

That last tweet threatening oversight is adorable. Trump is days away from an all-out oversight blitz from the newly Democratic House. The Republican base will soon have even more of a siege mentality than it does now. It’s unimaginable given the GOP’s track record of the past two years that they’ll do anything but circle the wagons around POTUS to keep their voters happy. Rubio can always make floor speeches about interventionism if he likes.

Lindsey Graham was more restrained in his reaction to the Mattis news but he’s staring into the foreign-policy abyss too:

Our Afghan partners are incapable of subduing the threat posed by ISIS-K alone.

In addition, our intelligence capability and military might cannot be replaced by any other regional ally when it comes to subduing ISIS-K in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 20, 2018

The conditions in Afghanistan – at the present moment – make American troop withdrawals a high risk strategy.

If we continue on our present course we are setting in motion the loss of all our gains and paving the way toward a second 9/11.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) December 20, 2018

His golfing buddy had a few words for him earlier about withdrawal:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075833793720795141

What’s amazing about the last two days is that the Senate is supposed to be where the GOP retains some congressional muscle. They just got wiped out in the House but gained a pair of seats in the upper chamber. They were about to become the tip of the Republicans’ legislative spear. Then, in the span of 24 hours, Trump yanked U.S. troops out of Syria, declared the Senate’s CR dead on arrival, and accepted the resignation of his widely admired defense secretary. There are reports on the wires tonight, as Graham notes, that withdrawal from Afghanistan is next. The whole gang has been marginalized, if temporarily. And since Republican pols are terrified of angering Trump’s base, there’s only so much they can do to confront him. Lord knows they’re not going to partner with Nancy Pelosi against Trump, assuming any common ground might be found. The note of despair you’re hearing in Rubio’s and Graham’s virtual voices is driven by their growing awareness of irrelevance.

Can’t wait to see what happens if Trump nominates someone who’s sympathetic to his isolationism as the new SecDef. Would Rubio or Graham — or Ben Sasse or Ted Cruz, or any of the Senate’s numerous hawks — dare bork him? We’ll know soon what the relationship between Trump and his Senate majority will look like over the final two years of his term. I’ll say this, though: If the odds of the Senate removing Trump after he’s impeached were less than five percent yesterday, they’re less than 10 percent today. We may yet see 15.

Here’s Miller insisting that everything’s cool because, after all, Assad and Russia and Iran hate ISIS too and have self-interested reasons to continue the fight against the group themselves. In theory, sure. But in practice it might be easier for them to accommodate ISIS by quietly reaching an arrangement to leave them be so long as the jihadis focus their activities on the U.S. and its allies. Why fight a long guerrilla campaign when you can convince your enemy to target your mutual enemy instead? That’s a common devil’s bargain in the Middle East. Evidently Miller thinks his audience is stupid. He’s probably right.

CNN's @WolfBlitzer: "The President says on one day that ISIS is defeated. The next day he says ISIS is there and let Russia take care of it."

White House adviser Stephen Miller: "ISIS has been defeated." https://t.co/MigQ8PUHUK pic.twitter.com/48jBY1g77z

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) December 20, 2018