Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
Did the Freedom Caucus just pull the Republican Party back off the ledge, before it jumped to its death? A case can be made for that.
Before the American Health Care Act, aka “Ryancare,” was pulled off the House floor Friday, it enjoyed the support — of 17 percent of Americans. Had it passed, it faced an Antietam in the GOP Senate, and probable defeat.
Had it survived there, to be signed by President Trump, it would have meant 14 million Americans losing their health insurance in 2018.
First among the losers would have been white working-class folks who delivered the Rust Belt states to President Trump.
“Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan,” said JFK.
So, who are the losers here?
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First and foremost, Speaker Paul Ryan and House Republicans who, having voted 50 times over seven years to repeal Obamacare, we learned, had no consensus plan ready to replace it.
Moreover, they put a bill on the floor many had not read, and for which they did not have the votes.
More than a defeat, this was a humiliation. For the foreseeable future, a Republican Congress and president will coexist with a health care regime that both loathe but cannot together repeal and replace.
Moreover, this defeat suggests that, given the ideological divide in the GOP, and the unanimous opposition of congressional Democrats, the most impressive GOP majorities since the 1920s may be impotent to enact any major complicated or complex legislation.
Friday’s failure appears to be another milestone in the decline and fall of Congress, which the Constitution, in Article I, fairly anoints as our first branch of government.
Through the last century, Congress has steadily surrendered its powers, with feeble resistance, to presidents, the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve, the regulatory agencies, even the bureaucracy.
The long retreat goes on.
Another truth was reconfirmed Friday. Once an entitlement program has been created with millions of beneficiaries, it becomes almost impossible to repeal. As Ronald Reagan said, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Nor did President Trump escape unscathed.
Among the reasons he was elected was the popular belief, which carried him through scrapes that would have sunk other candidates, that, whatever his faults or failings, he was a doer, a man of action — “He gets things done!”
To have failed on his first big presidential project has thus been an occasion of merriment for the boo-birds in the Beltway bleachers.
Yet, still, Trump’s Saturday tweet — “Obamacare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan … Do not worry!” — may prove prophetic.
Now that “Trumpcare” or “Ryancare” is gone, the nation must live with Obamacare. A Democratic program from birth, it is visibly failing. And Democrats now own it again, as not one Democrat was there to help reform it. In the off-year election of 2018, they may be begging for Republican help in reforming the health care system.
After what he sees as a wonderful win, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer now intends to block a Senate vote on Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, and thus force Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to muster 60 votes to halt a Democratic filibuster.
Should Schumer persist, Senate Republicans will exercise the “nuclear option,” i.e., change the rules to allow debate to be cut off with 51 votes, and then elevate Gorsuch with their own slim majority.
Why would Schumer squander his political capital by denying a quality candidate like Judge Gorsuch a vote? Does he also think that a collapsing Obamacare — even its backers believe is in need of corrective surgery — will be an asset for his imperiled colleagues in 2018? The last time Democrats headed down that Radical Road and nominated George McGovern, they lost 49 states.
While the Republicans have sustained a defeat, this is not the end of the world. And there was an implied warning in the president’s Sunday tweet:
“Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare.”
What Trump is explaining here is that, if Republican majorities in the House and Senate cannot or will not unite with his White House behind solutions on health care, taxes, infrastructure, border security, he will seek out moderate Democrats to get the work done.
This humiliation of Obamacare reform may prove a watershed for the Trump presidency. What he is saying is simple and direct:
I am a Republican president who wants to work with Republicans. But if they cannot or will not work with me, I will find another partner with whom to form coalitions to write the laws and enact the reforms America needs, because, in the last analysis, while party unity is desirable, the agenda I was elected to enact is critical.
The health care defeat yet may prove to be another example of winning by losing.
Pat still doesn’t get it. Obamacare doesn’t need to be replaced. He repeats the Schumer claim that 18 million people would “lose their insurance” if Ryan’s little, quibbling adjustment bill had passed, when the real damage the bill would have done was a solidification of Obamacare by adding the GOP to the list of babydaddies of that monstrosity.
Sometimes Pat seems to almost get it, but sometimes he’s such an obvious TV addicted GOPtard political junkie that it’s hard to get through his article without getting pissed off.
Pat is C/O.
I’m really tired of hearing that the ObamaCareLite was a ‘repeal’. It was nothing of the sort and I wish everyone would quit publishing that lie. It was ACA with a couple modifications that did nothing for all Americans suffering under the ACA mandates.
Truly repeal ACA and replace it with NOTHING. I don’t want the government in my healthcare, telling me what tests and vaccines I must have to continue to receive care and neither should anyone else.
My only recommends are to roll back and allow people to select insurance based on their own needs (e.g. I’m 63 and don’t need pregnancy coverage), return of catastrophic coverage and I’ll pay for my own doctor visits.
My only thing I would keep is that those with pre-existing conditions are not denied coverage but may pay a slightly higher premium. Keeping in mind many conditions are lifestyle related…..just saying.
Agreed, repeal…stop…do not pass go. The insurance scam could/should be abolished. Nevertheless, the fast food inhaling soda slurping obese diabetics will not change no matter the cost. Of the diabetes II sufferers I personally know, some do make the effort with success, more do not, they just complain and continue in their stupid lifestyles.
As for Medicare, I have been in the system for 5 years, paid in over 6000 dollars for Part B and have yet to visit a doctor. I am thankful for my good health but also know that age will catch up with me. If it were not for the outrageous cost of simple medical treatments I would forgo insurance. No easy answers for insurance costs, health care, and meds as long as the nanny state manages it. And, the AMA, insurance companies, hospital corporations, and big pharma will not allow much in the way of changes they do not approve of. Bottom line…we are fucked!
Let’s see:
A businessman who has made THOUSANDS of deals blew it big time on this one. Did he fail spectacularly, or just not want it?
I saw a piece that Steve Bannon summoned the Freedom Caucus to the White House in order to ORDER them to vote for it. Would a master persuader trigger every OCD nerve in a whole pack of Congressmen (most of whom got there by being independent) by accident or incompetence? Or did he really mean to ENSURE that none of them would vote for it, thereby killing it?
Trump watched ObamaCare go by, back when Nancy famously said they had to vote for it in order to see what’s in it. He watched Lyin’ Ryan do essentially the same thing: should have recognized that it would be an albatross, so that by “taking the blame” by provoking the Freedom Caucus to kill it, he actually took the heat off the Senate and gave some cover (of a sort) to the House leadership, creating a favor he could call in later. Is that what he had in mind, to get tax reform by killing an amateur, error-riddled bill?
By killing this one can he get a better one later? Remember, as long as repeal happens in the next four years he has “kept” his campaign promise.
Trump MAY have been surprised, out-maneuvered, out of his league dealing with the RINOs and obstructed by the DemonCrats; he may have not seen this coming, sent the wrong underling to deal with the Freedom Caucus, missed his best chance to repeal ObamaCare.
But I wouldn’t put my money on that bet.