What this Country Needs Is a Powerful Republican Congress. Huh?
You come home; you find a thief in your bedroom tossing whatever valuables he can find into an already stuffed laundry bag. You are shocked; not only are you being robbed, but it’s your laundry bag he’s using. Still, you gather your wits, regain your righteousness and state in your most outraged voice. STOP! THIS IS AGAINST THE LAW! The thief barely lifts his head and continues the search for loot. Maybe you haven’t been clear; you try again. YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW AND SHOULD YOU CONTINUE, YOU WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW. Nothing stops the thief. What’s going on here?
Two Different Sets of Rules: Law versus Power
You and the thief are playing by different sets of rules. You count on the law to control behavior; your thief’s strength rests on power – what he can get away with. And it is a mistake to assume that you simply need to clarify the law for power to be overcome, for power will continue to win until it is stopped, not by the law, but by power. So, where is power?
Poor Richard Nixon, He Lived in the Wrong Era.
Vice President Vance was probably right to say that Richard Nixon’s crimes – primarily his attempt to cover up the Watergate break-in and willingness to pay hush money to the perpetrators (all on tape) - would have been “a twelve-hour news story” had they occurred in the current era.
In the current era, President Trump was impeached twice. In 2019 he was charged with abuse of power: withholding military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure that country into launching an investigation (real or fabricated) into Joe Biden, his political rival. He was also charged with blocking witnesses and documents from a congressional inquiry. In his second impeachment (2021) he was charged with inciting insurrection, attempting to overturn the 2020 election, including pressuring election officials to change their voting totals in his favor. The impeachment cases were supported by eyewitnesses, taped conversations, plus public presidential behavior for all to see.
For his offences, Nixon resigned in disgrace; despite his offenses, Trump has survived well into his second term. It wasn’t the nature of their crimes that determined the two presidents’ divergent fates; it was power. Nixon was undone by the power of fellow republicans to join with democrats in the investigation of his crimes and in the impeachment process. (Nixon resigned before the impeachment case went to the Senate.) Trump has faced no such power confrontation from his fellow republicans. In his second impeachment trial, 43 republicans voted to acquit him, only 7 to convict, and at least 4 of the seven were either retiring or wouldn’t face re-election for several years.
Power and the Law. Trump has power. He has the constitutional power to choose the heads of all the executive institutions including the department of justice and the FBI. He has used that power to select people whom he feels confident in their loyalty and willingness to support his agenda. He also exerts power beyond what is authorized by the constitution, that is, he continues to do whatever he wants to do until he is stopped by the power of others.
The congress also has constitutional power, among them the sole power to declare war, create the rules for attaining citizenship, impeach the president in the House of Representatives and try him in the Senate. The republican congress has failed to use its congressional power to check the president. Congress has passed many important laws. For example, following evidence of Nixon withholding funds for domestic projects he opposed, congress passed a law requiring the president to gain congressional approval for any delay or withholding of funds that have been allocated by congress. But the current power president, rolled right past the law, using such funds as if they were his private tools to be withheld or delayed based on his likes and dislikes or as leverage over others. So much for the law in the face of power.
Congressional Republicans are Just Another Powerless Middle System. I maintain that there is power in the congressional republicans, much more than members believe, and that their powerlessness is not personal, and it is not unique to their current situation. it is systemic. It is a phenomenon we have observed over the decades in organizations and institutions – from manufacturing plants to law firms, to non-profits, and educational institutions. Especially, when systems are under pressure to change, the Tops are ok as are the Bottoms; the problem is the middles. They are weak, powerless, resistant to change.
Congressional republicans, like members of other middle groups, are in a tearing condition, torn between the often-conflicting demands from multiple sides - the president, their constituents, one another, the constitution, and from their own moral principles. A common dilemma in the middle: If you try to please one side, you displease the other; if you try to please both, you end up pleasing neither. For some congressional middles this tearing middle condition can be so excruciating that they save themselves by leaving the job. The more usual survival strategy is for middles to choose which of their competing pressure groups is their major client – Is it their constituents, or the president, or requests/demands from their peers, or their own ideology or guiding principles? Once middles choose their priority constituent, that tends to leave them in a contentious relationship with other constituents. Middleness is a difficult territory to navigate.
Middles Just Don’t Get Along. What makes the territory even more difficult to navigate is the typically non-supportive way middles feel and act toward one another. They tend to be competitive, sensitive to how they are measuring up compared to their peers. Are they doing better than them? Worse than them? Are they more important or less important than the others? They tend to be evaluative of one another, often on surface matters – how they speak (orate), dress, think, skin color, gender, walk, strategize. They often don’t like one another despite reference to “my esteemed colleague.” And they don’t believe that there is any collective power in their middle place: Power is elsewhere - at the Top, the presidency, and at times among the citizens as they create country-wide, well-organized, high-energy protests against what they consider to be the insensitivity or cruelty of the presidency. But congressional republican middles believe that there is no collective power in the middle.
The System Principle Behind Congressional Weakness
How we feel about ourselves and others is shaped by the condition we are in. Teams of Tops, in reaction to the complexity of the condition they are in, tend to reflexively fall into territorial (turf) issues with one another; Teams of Bottoms, in response to their shared vulnerability, tend to reflexively fall into WE versus THEM relationships, a unified WE with one another; and an antagonistic THEM toward their perceived oppressors; and collections of Middles, in their dispersed condition, tend to reflexively fall into an I consciousness -isolated, distant, competitive, evaluative, and unfriendly.
When we fall into these relationship issues, we tend to think that how we experience others is reality; that this is who these others really are, but that is not true. These relationship issues are the consequences of our reflexive responses to the conditions we are in. Change the way we respond to these condition and a different cast of characters will appear – more attractive, more compatible, and more effective. So, congressional republicans, in order to develop their power need to develops ways of managing the forces that tear them apart individually and collectively. They need to develop the fine art of integration.
Integration: Transforming Middle Powerlessness into Middle Power
The implications of this system knowledge for our congressional republicans is this: So long as congressional republicans remain in their dispersed state with members dealing alone with the multiple pulls of their middle condition, they will remain a weak, divided, and powerless entity. They will never become the power capable of challenging the president’s power. The key to developing their personal and institutional power lies in mastering the art of integration: a process of moving back and forth between dispersing and integrating, between being “out there” doing their congressional work and coming together regularly, with their fellow congressional republicans, sharing their experiences in the middle; sharing their reactions to presidential power moves, supporting one another, helping one another deal with the dilemmas they are facing, and strategizing individual and collective actions. When middles are able to create a climate of hearing one another, sharing experiences, and supporting one another, a powerful cycle develops: integration strengthens dispersal - members become more informed, supported, and feeling that they have a valued support base behind them; and dispersal enriches integration - bringing more data, experiences, and issues to the group to work with.
The focus of integration meetings is not on policy (policy issues are assumed to be dealt with in other settings) integration meetings focus on power, personal and institutional – are we giving up our power, personal and collective? And what are the consequences for us and the government? Do we have a vision of ourselves as a powerful system and how becoming one would affect our lives and the functioning of congress?
Integration meetings need to be sacred commitments, the middle condition is a powerful centrifugal force pulling members away from one another; there will always be good reasons not to meet. It needs to be made known to others that integration is an essential part of the work you do; its boundaries need to be made clear. You might do well to employ a consultant at least at the early stages of your work to keep you focused on the business of the group: the exploration of your personal and institutional power.
There are many issues to be dealt with beyond the purpose of this paper, among them: how often to meet, how large should integrating groups be, what to do with members who choose not to join, how to deal with ever changing membership through elections and term limits. Our experience is that powerful middle systems tend to become expert in handling their own issues.
Why Doesn’t Integration Happen?
There are many factors that work against integration. Life is already busy, who needs another meeting? Integration as described is neither the norm for congressional behavior, nor is it normal. The dispersion of middles is normal; the environment makes it happen. Whereas integration is not normal; it requires conscious choice and the willingness to work against the forces the draw members apart from one another. Power Tops prefer middles who support or ignore their actions. And there is another challenge to deal with. If you asked middles if they want to integrate with their peers, it is likely they would say NO. You ask WHY, and they say Well it might work with other groups but not with us. You ask WHY and they say Because we don’t get along, we tend to be competitive with one another, evaluative of one another, we don’t particularly like one another, and, besides, there is no power in the middle. So, middles think that the reason they don’t integrate is how they feel about one another, and if they felt differently about one another then they would integrate. When in fact it’s just the other way around. They feel the way they feel about one another because they don’t integrate, and if they did integrate, they would feel very differently. Facing up to the consequences of middle weakness along with a view of a better way forward should provide the impetus to give integration a chance.
That’s as much as I can offer in this piece. There may be more on the power of middle integration in blogs to come.
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This piece has focused on a specific set of circumstances: a power president who believes that as president he can do whatever he wants to do even as his actions run against law and precedence, and a weak congressional group from his own party. The assumption behind this paper is that the integrity of the whole system requires a power that can check the power of the president. The lack of such a countering force results in failed democracies and the rise of oppressive and destructive systems.
The issues and methods described here go beyond the present situation. There are similar circumstances, in organizations and institutions, of leaders whose actions exceed the restraints of law and precedence, while others in the system see the danger but feel fearful and powerless to confront it. I would hope that this piece would shed some light on their situation while offering a framework for change.
Barry Oshry, July 2026
