Trump didn’t wing it entirely. He shrewdly picked issues ― abortion, guns and Obamacare ― to appeal to the GOP base, earning standing ovations when he pledged his conservative orthodoxy on these matters. The crowd (at least the non-Ron Paul-supportive elements of it) ate it up, while out in the halls there was palpable buzz.
.. Trump almost didn’t make it to CPAC that year. The gay-conservative group GOProud, which was waging its own battles with conference organizers, initially invited him.
.. GOProud’s former chairman Chris Barron thought of the idea of getting Trump to attend. He reached out to Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime confidant, about the possibility. They collectively agreed to the idea... “When Trump walked into the building, it was like Michael Jackson coming out of a Japanese airport. There were throngs of people around him,” he added. “From the moment when he walked into the door, I knew this was different.”
.. “The mere fact of showing up ultimately makes you more acceptable, because being nice to people and talking to them beats the hell out of calling them names,”.. “Though he does both.”.. “Here’s a person who’s willing to expand the party, the movement. Him being accepting to gays … is one of the biggest reasons why I thought young conservatives would accept him,” she said.
Amid Trump Controversies, Tax Overhaul’s Uncertain Path
Congressional Republicans say an ambitious plan is in the works, but obstacles remain
Nobody is quite sure what the White House position is, or when it will become clear. And the whole process is being slowed down by the struggle over whether and how to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which itself is bogged down in uncertainty.
.. Still, GOP leaders consider handling Obamacare first vital for procedural reasons. It’s necessary to resolve the costs and tax implications of the health plan to write a new budget. And under congressional rules a new budget plan is necessary to provide an umbrella under which a tax overhaul can be passed with a simple majority, thereby avoiding a potentially deadly Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
Republicans Have Lost the Plot on Their Obamacare Repeal
Another approach is to chip away one provision at a time. Congress could, for example, eliminate mental health care or contraceptive coverage, which is required of health plans under the current law.
Repeal and Compete
Modern conservatism, at least in its pre-Donald Trump incarnation, evolved to believe in a marriage of Edmund Burke and Milton Friedman, in which the wisdom of tradition and the wisdom of free markets were complementary ideas.
.. The essence of Cassidy-Collins, and the reason that many Republicans don’t like it, is that it isn’t actually a full Obamacare replacement. Instead, it’s a federalist compromise. It lets individual state governments decide whether they want to stick with Obamacare or not, which would mean that the law would remain intact in most blue states for the time being, while redder states would have the opportunity to turn roughly the same amount of money (95 percent) to a different end.
.. That end would look like one of the more plausible conservative alternatives to Obamacare: a subsidy to cover the cost of a catastrophic health insurance plan, plus a directly funded health savings account to cover primary care.
.. The peril is that there would be too wide a gap between what the money in your health savings account covers and what you need before your catastrophic coverage kicks in. In which case many people with consistent health care costs for chronic problems would rack up impossible medical bills in short order.