Hat tip Starfcker
The other day Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania explained why Republicans are having such trouble with health care. Speaking at a town hall during the July 4 recess, Toomey said, “I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win. I think most of my colleagues didn’t. So we didn’t expect to be in this situation.”
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No kidding. I too can report that, from June 16, 2015, to November 8, 2016, the feeling among the elected officials, party functionaries, consultants, strategists, and journalists in our nation’s capital was that Donald J. Trump stood no chance of becoming president of the United States. And because the political elite held this view with such self-assurance, with all the egotism and snobbery and moral puffery and snarkiness that distinguishes itself as a class, it did not spend more than a second, if that, thinking through the possible consequences of a Trump victory.
Among those consequences: The expectation that Republicans might actually try to keep the promises they’ve made to voters over the last eight years.
Paul Ryan’s well-intentioned but superfluous “Better Way” agenda notwithstanding, Republicans and D.C. conservatives were far too taken with the spectacle of the campaign, and with brooding over the ramifications of their coming defeat, than in building coalitions for policies that both Congress and the party’s eventual nominee might support. How to bridge the divide between conservatives and the nation-state populists driving the Trump movement was a subject that rarely came up before Election Day.
Congressmen in particular—obsessed with self-preservation, wedded to pet issues and special interests, enraptured by self-mythology—weren’t interested in acknowledging the force of, or adapting to, the Trump candidacy. One day last October, for example, I tried to explain to a GOP official that it increasingly does not matter where one stands on the spectrum of left and right, what matters is whose side one is on. The official just smiled politely and ignored me.
They didn’t think Trump could, or would, or should win, and so they dropped the health care and tax policy ball. Nor did the president’s mutability help things. It wasn’t clear whether Trump wanted full repeal of Obamacare with a replacement to come later, or repeal-and-replace with no gap, as he told 60 Minutes in November, or which taxes and regulations he wanted to keep, or how much he wanted to reform Medicaid. What matters to this president is the accomplishment, the signing ceremony, the trophy, the result. How he gets there, the details of legislation, are less important to him. That’s what he has Congress for.
A corollary to the widespread belief that Trump would lose was that criticizing him had no cost. Trump might have moved into first place in the national polling within a month of declaring his candidacy, he might have held that position throughout the entire primary with the brief exception of a few days in November 2015, but he was, to say the least, no ordinary frontrunner. Typically, party flacks shy away from offending frontrunners, lest they risk jobs in a possible administration. The party thus presents something like a united front, even if the primary is contested. Think of the Democrats in 2016.
But the Republicans last year were different. Trump was overthrowing both the party and conservative movement establishments, violating norms of discourse and behavior, altering the ideological composition of the GOP, and thriving amidst chaos, polarization, and conflict. Not only did he invite rebuke, he loved it, for it gave him the opportunity to separate himself from the Republican Party of the Bushes, Dole, McCain, and Romney. And since the operative assumption was that he would in no circumstances become president, GOP stalwarts zinged him with abandon, knowing they were not giving up the chance to be, say, assistant secretary for consular affairs.
Well, joke’s on us, because not only did Trump become president, he knows how to hold a grudge. The result is an understaffed administration. Cabinet agencies send the names of potential bureaucrats to the White House, and the names are rejected if they attacked or mocked the president on social media during the campaign. This is within Trump’s rights, of course. I wouldn’t hire someone who disliked me, either. (Let that be a warning to aspiring journalists.) My point is he would have a much larger talent pool to draw from had more people thought he was going to win.
“Donald Trump Faltering? Die-Hard Fans Refuse to Buy It,” read the headline of a particularly condescending New York Times report from Pennsylvania last October. “In the campaign’s last weeks,” wrote the Times, “at such rallies, Mr. Trump is sealed in a hermetic bubble with his most fervent supporters. They are people passionate enough to wait hours to attend a rally where the candidate and the crowds draw energy and affirmation from each other, while dismissing any discouraging information.” The rubes.
Turns out, there’s another hermetic bubble, one that stretches from West Forty-Third Street in Manhattan to the corner of Seventeenth and I streets in D.C. It didn’t expect Donald Trump to win, it dismissed any discouraging information to the contrary, and it did not, in the words of Pat Toomey, “expect to be in this situation.” And if we didn’t expect to be where we are today, how on Earth can we know where we’ll be tomorrow?
Star: In the last 25 years after Clinton won and the republiclowns began wallowing in self pity. They have turned into “progressive lite” functionaries that have taken care of number one and no one else. This article explains a lot…but when the next round of elections are upon us how in the name of hell can these people actually stand on a podium and ask/beg for our votes after this terrible performance of duty? My congresstoad actually sent out a 4th of July missive that celebrated all the food, fun and family aspects of the holiday completely ignoring what he has been up to in DC. Accident, nostalgia or maybe he hasn’t accomplished one thing beyond picking his “good-old boy” nose. Right now he and both of the senators are on thin ice and if a good candidate comes along to take his chair he is gone as well as the senators. Can you say “anti-incumbent”…..
Add to this the democlowns are actually starting to “pimp” Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate. Despite the fact their current presidential bench is a clownshow her candidacy is disastrous. Her record in Cali is great for the marxist-leninist sandinista crowd in power but is an anathema to the rest of the country. She is a pretentious, self absorbed and feckless clown who fits the democlown mold perfectly…….Kinda obamma-lite…..yeah light, bright and almost white like the brothers used to say 50 years ago on the street.
If the republiclowns do not get off their ignorant asses and start executing the measures that this nation voted for then it is all over…..
Fuckers. All politicians are cocksucking fuckers. Control both houses and the presidency and are too scared to do a damn thing. Fuck them all.
Fuckers can be replaced with Grifters. The whole medical “debate” is nothing but trying to figure out how to sell insurance no one needs for a product that is grossly overpriced because of a monopoly, aided and abetted by the same “law makers”. I say let the damn thing collapse on its own. Then, maybe we would get a free market in healthcare, and poof, insurance would no longer be necessary. Neither would the teams of “medical billing” drones, fresh out of Apollo college, and neither would the other overhead and BS that never even sees a patient.
Llpoh, you sum it up well, but I would replace the word – scared – with corrupt.
They don’t control jack shit. Neither do the democrats. They have no real power and even if they did they wouldn’t waste it doing what the people want. They’ve achieved enough power now to generally ignore the sheople. Notice how many of them walk out of their own town hall meetings or never bother holding them at all. They don’t give two shits about you or I. They are puppets marching to elite orders. In return they enjoy power & prestige for a time and riches for life without ever breaking a sweat.
After watching Bill and George on stage last week, the first thing I did was vomit, the second was to thank God Trump was elected!
Llpoh. Yep feel the same here. Bunch of cowards afraid of their own power.
Sadly President Trump has gradually waddled into the swamp and is now telling us the water is not to bad .
As for our do nothing congress BLAH BLAH BLAH …
You don’t really expect any true and direct honest action to produce real fixes to what has been done to us over the last 40 years do you ? $40 plus billon for HERION addict issues but $40 billon in tax incentives to relieve people who worked there lives away for a pension and or social security fuck that we need to save drug addicts ! There is something in the water in Washington DC and its infectious . When Trump lined his cabnient with Wall Street millionaires I thiought WTF . These are the basturds we were singing JUMP YOU FUCKERS IN 2007/2008 !
Where is the bombastic Trump with a pair of gold plated cast iron balls to start plowing thru DC with a mega phone YOUR FIRED ?
As for health care , end health insurence companies the way we wiped out all the other industries !
Doctors and Hospitals would have to charge what people could afford to pay and drug companies would have to stop gouging Americans .
Health Care in America is the one business that has been insulated from real world financial solutions that govern and regulate every other service or industrial business in America . I have first hand experience with catastrophic health care issues and the expenses incurred and my conclusion is this : The entire system from Wall Street to K-Street to Capitol Street to Hospital and Pharmacy Street are in collusion to fuck us over and rape us financially taking advantage of us when we are at the weakest most vulnreble points in life ! When you are at a medical point where you are severely injured or banging on deaths door you sign anything to get the help you need and everybody involved knows this . This is not what good people do to their fellow citizens in need and not what our government officials should have conspired to allow a system that works like this excluding themselves from it ! How Convienant ! JUMP YOU FUCKERS
Government has made their own bed, let them lie in it.
Government believes, as do most gerbils, they and only they should control everything; the climate, education, construction, health care, the foods we eat, who we can marry, marijuana, the sex we have in our own homes, gambling, on and fucking on, the more fucking laws the better we’ll all be.
They can’t, but the maroons still hope and believe they can, so they make lame excuses and lie and lie and lie…so while congress might have a 20% approval rating they still enjoy an 80% reelection rating.
That, is the maroons fault.
@card, problem is, WE have to lie in that bed the government made. In fact, they made it just for us! (as you point out).
All Congressmen have the same playbook. It has only one play. Enact laws that steal from the productive people and give it to the Congressman and his supporters. Do it in such a way as to avoid blame for the negative results. Their job is to steal and blame someone else.
Kamala Harris would be a strong candidate for the Dems. Probably better than anyone else they have except maybe Hickenlooper.
I saw this on a car yesterday (not the one in the photo):
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I guess this could apply to either political party but I’ll bet the owner was a Democrap.
I felt like rolling up next to him and shouting “Elect a crook and expect to get robbed!” (implying Hillary)…but didn’t.
Probably better you didn’t.
Leftists are well known for assaulting anyone that expresses disagreement with them.
Staffing? It ain’t just the search for loyalists that’s holding things up.
By this time Obumma had 179 appointees approved and working. Trump has 49.
This is directly due to the obstruction of the D’s and the complicity of worthless shits like McConnell, Ryan, and John McSenile.
The real opposition Trump faces in his efforts to change things isn’t the MSM or the Democrats, it’t the Republicans.
The, at last the majority of them, seem to like to use rhetoric against the status quo to attract voters to reelect them but are horrified at the idea that anything will actually change.
They’re just way too comfortable with the way things are and their place in them.
we need to be able to give 100 thumbs up–
good comment–
This is about California,not DC,but it illustrates how f’ed up politicians are.
From wolfstreet.com
California Is About To Bail Out Tesla
Don’t need a sentence because just a few words will do: liberal liars, traitors and thieves
We knew they were snakes when we picked them up. Now we’re bitching because they are acting like snakes act.
Good post and its true but I don’t think repealing Obamacare was Trump’s top legislative priority. It was Ryan’s and Trump should have insisted he have a workable plan and the votes to pass it before he got behind it.
Let’s face it. Healthcare is stunningly complex and it is the largest industry in the US. If you include government spending on it, which you have to, it is bigger than the government itself. It is the biggest ‘swamp’ of all. It can’t be paid for without taking vast sums of money from either current recipients or healthcare providers so it might have been better for Trump to just let Obamacare stay and collapse as the Federal subsidies to state expansion of medicaid expired. At least his hands would be ‘clean’ and it would be the Democrats running around like Chicken Little as their states ran out of money to fund it.
More important for Trump should have been regulatory and serious tax reform. Nothing can be paid for if our GDP remains in a 2% or less growth mode. We are just running out the clock.