President-elect Donald Trump has named as his chief strategist Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News. Bannon describes himself as an aggressive anti-establishment figure, and by that he means establishment on both sides of the aisle. He has no more love for traditional GOP inhabitants like Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan than he does for left-leaning Dems like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren. Bannon is an equal opportunity offender who practices a sort of anarchism. He has said he wants to “bitch-slap the GOP.”
Now with Trump’s presidential imprimatur, Bannon will get his slaps in — but he can’t be anti-establishment and a White House insider, can he? Much has been made of Trump’s entering office with a GOP majority in Congress, a signal that Trump may enjoy a legislative honeymoon early. But many of those incumbent Republicans are the same ones Bannon wants to slap around. One of them, of course, is Speaker of the House Ryan. Can Bannon work with him? Depends on bygones. In January, Bannon said: “We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.”