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Notes -
I'm not sure this reasoning works; tariffs were actually in place for more than a year. Are you, hypothetical republican senator that doesn't want tariffs but also doesn't want to offend Trump or his loyalists, satisfied with how things played out? You get to preserve the appearance of loyalty... but you also get tariffs. How would you be worse off if you held your nose and voted for tariffs if you get them either way? Or if tariffs are truly unacceptable to you, wouldn't you want to be able to vote them down?
I can maybe see a way to thread this needle -- the tariffs were eventually struck down, after all... only to be immediately replaced with 'new' tariffs under a different legal theory. Theoretically this one has a time limit, but who at this point believes such technicalities will stop Trump from doing whatever he wants? He'll just come up with some other excuse.
And, actually, this way you get the worst of both worlds; if the tariffs stood, you'd at least get the revenue. This way you get all the economic damage -- the true harm done by tariffs is in the transactions that don't take place, not in the ones that do -- and a $200 billion hole in the budget. And it's not even as though consumers will be made whole. Refunds will go to the people who filed the paperwork, because that's easy, and not to the people who actually bore the incidence of the tax, which has essentially no relation to those accounting details.
I think the actual reason the Senate doesn't want to govern is simpler and more cynical: if voters can't recall a single thing their senator did, they re-elect them. With a baseline 90%+ incumbent re-election rate, there's just nothing to be gained by rocking the boat. (That is, if maintaining their position is the only thing they care about, which is a model I've been given little reason to doubt.)
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