When partisan criticism is missing, it might be a sign that politicians in both parties are helping themselves, not the country. Or, it might mean they’re pandering to the passions of the public and press rather than doing the hard work of thinking things through.
.. Honest partisanship isn’t the problem, bipartisan dishonesty is.
.. Both parties have become defined by their lies and their refusal to accept reality. It’s a problem bigger than health care, but health care is probably the best illustration of it.
.. The Democrats aren’t any better. Obamacare itself was lied into passage. “You can keep your plan!” “You can keep your doctor!” “Your premiums won’t go up!” These were lies. If those promises were remotely true, Obamacare wouldn’t be the mess it is.
.. The Republican “repeal and replace” bills debated for the last six months did not in fact repeal Obamacare. They kept most of its regulations intact — particularly the popular ones. The GOP did seek to repeal and reform the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, but that’s not the same thing as repealing Obamacare.
The Republican “repeal and replace” bills debated for the last six months did not in fact repeal Obamacare. They kept most of its regulations intact — particularly the popular ones. The GOP did seek to repeal and reform the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, but that’s not the same thing as repealing Obamacare.
.. More important, they also know that the GOP wasn’t pushing an actual repeal. But they couldn’t tolerate for a moment the idea that the Republicans would get to claim it was repeal. So the one thing both sides could agree upon was that this was a zero-sum war over repealing Obamacare — when it wasn’t.
.. If Trump and the GOP agreed to abandon “repeal,” as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer wants, one can only wonder how much replacing of Obamacare Schumer would allow the GOP to get away with.
.. Likewise, if Democrats could somehow give Republicans the ability to say they repealed Obamacare, many Republican senators — and certainly Trump — would probably be happy to leave the bulk of it intact.
The Party of Bad Faith?
If the Republican attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare ultimately fails, it will be a lesson in the wages of political bad faith.
.. But the effort also suffers from a mismatch between the longtime public posture of Republicans (Obamacare must and will be fully repealed) and their private misgivings (do we really have to do this, even partially?).
.. Winston Churchill said that nothing is so exhilarating as getting shot at without consequence. For Republicans, nothing was as exhilarating as repealing Obamacare without consequence. UP NEXT Trump’s legal team gets shaken up
The Looming Republican Disgrace Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449720/republican-health-care-bill-looming-disgrace?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Week%20in%20Review%202017-07-23&utm_term=VDHM
A majority is a terrible thing to waste.
On the cusp of a historic failure, the party has begun the finger-pointing, and it’s hard to argue with any of it.
- The establishment is right that Trump is incapable of true legislative leadership.
- The Trumpists are right that the establishment is ineffectual.
- Conservatives are right that moderates don’t really want to repeal Obamacare, whatever they’ve said in the past.
- And pragmatists are right that a few conservatives are beholden to a self-defeating purity.
.. At least Collins, an ideological outlier in the Republican Conference, has been consistent. She voted against the repeal-only bill in 2015, and the GOP leadership never thought she was gettable.
.. For Rand Paul, clearly, a perhaps once-in-a-generation opportunity to significantly reform two entitlement programs isn’t as important as scoring cheap points against his colleagues in the cause of getting as many cable hits as possible.
.. it’s particularly important that the Utah senator keep the big picture in view; torpedoing the entire effort over a relatively technical question about the insurance risk pools — Lee’s current posture — would be a disastrous mistake.
More and More Trump Supporters Celebrate His Character Flaws
He’s not the engine but the hood ornament for a movement that now feels liberated from traditional rules of decent behavior.
.. But for a minority of conservatives, Trump’s character was always a feature, not a bug. He fought, and even if he didn’t fight smart, he was willing to hit anyone with a glass vase at any time. He was an unpredictable force, a brutal hurricane tearing apart the old political institutions. For this group, Trump’s character recommended him rather than counted against him. U.S. bans citizens from visiting North Korea
Under President Trump, one inconvenient and morally disquieting fact has become increasingly clear: More and more conservatives fall into the second group.
Trump has not moderated his behavior one iota since becoming president. In fact, the man who once promised he would be “so presidential you will be so bored” has now redefined “presidential” to fit his behavior — he recently tweeted that his behavior is presidential because he is president. By that logic, Dr. Kevorkian’s assisted killings would be medical because Kevorkian was a doctor.
.. But Trump has re-enshrined the Iran deal; his greatest defender on Fox News, Tucker Carlson, now spends his evenings browbeating commentators who suggest that Iran poses a threat to the United States. Trump has doubled down on President Obama’s policies on Russia in Syria; his cease-fire deal with the Russians was so bad that even the Israelis rejected it. Trump has not reformed taxes. There is no world in which Obamacare will be repealed. There is no wall, nor will the wall be forthcoming anytime soon.
That’s not to say that Trump might not end up fulfilling some of these promises. I hope and pray he does. But it’s clear that the vast majority of Republicans no longer care if he does, so long as he does one thing: keep tweeting about the fake-news media.
.. Were Trump to fulfill every conservative pledge but stop tweeting about Mika Brzezinski’s face and CNN’s ratings, many Republicans would be less enamored of him. Trump’s visceral rage is what thrills Republicans, not his policy — and a huge number of Republicans aren’t even interested in whether the rage undercuts his policy. If Mike Pence replaced Donald Trump and implemented every jot and tittle of the conservative program, then won reelection, most Republicans would be enraged, not excited.
.. They’ve moved beyond claiming that the media lack evidence for actual collusion (which they do); they now say that even if Trump colluded with Russia, it’s fine.
.. In fact, it’s preferable! President Trump himself tweeted, “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!”
This quickly morphed into the preferred right-wing talking point: Trump fights, so of course he’s going to cross lines. That’s why we love him!
.. Trump isn’t the engine, he’s the hood ornament for a certain movement that now feels liberated from traditional rules of decent behavior. Trump allows us to indulge our id and feel righteous while doing it.
.. Trump isn’t the engine, he’s the hood ornament for a certain movement that now feels liberated from traditional rules of decent behavior. Trump allows us to indulge our id and feel righteous while doing it.
.. The first premise: The other side, which wants bad things, cheats and lies and acts in egregious ways.
.. The second premise: It requires cheating to defeat them. The third premise: If they are not defeated, the country will be destroyed.
Conclusion: It is morally required to cheat and lie and act in egregious ways.
.. A year ago, many conservatives said that ends justified means — and that the end was the implementation of conservative policies. Some conservatives still feel this way. But now that Trump isn’t actually implementing conservative policies, the truth is coming out: For most conservatives, the ends don’t just justify the means, the means are the ends. All that matters is the punching, even if the punching is both counterproductive and immoral.