So much for all that winning: Will the health care debacle expose the fraudulent nature of Trump's..
MONDAY, MAR 27, 2017 08:56 AM EDT
So much for all that winning: Will the health care debacle expose the fraudulent nature of Trump’s presidency?
Republicans have lost any ability to govern or pass legislation — and their president is an unrepentant scam artist
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
Back in early December of last year I wrote a piece in which I recounted all of President Barack Obama’s attempts to woo Republicans and wondered whether the Tea Party — represented by the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus — would save Obamacare by once again refusing to go along with the leadership. And by gosh, they went and did it again. By all accounts, the HFC wouldn’t accept Paul Ryan’s draconian “replacement” for Obamacare because its members didn’t merely go back to the time before the ACA was enacted — they wanted to take the health care system back to the time of Dickensian England.
Mainstream conservatives, on the other hand, were willing to deny millions of people health care but they figured their seats might be in jeopardy if they went as far as the Freedom Caucus demanded. This bill died the way that everything dies in the Republican Congress — at the hands of fanatics who will not take yes for an answer.
The best meme circulating on Twitter during the negotiations was this one:
Link to tweet
Speaker Paul Ryan deserves the lion’s share of the blame for this debacle. He’s the allegedly serious wonk who was supposed to be able to whip up a quick replacement in a matter of days that they could get through on reconciliation in the Senate with 50 votes, Trump would sign it and victory would be at hand in no time. That didn’t work out. Ryan’s alleged grasp of policy was always a Beltway delusion, largely based on his love of “Atlas Shrugged” and those blue, blue eyes. The health care bill he slapped together was a monstrosity that failed on every level, from cost savings to coverage, and it pleased absolutely no one. The trainwreck of a negotiation shows that Ryan is just as bad at political leadership as he is at policy.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/03/27/so-much-for-all-that-winning-will-the-health-care-debacle-expose-the-fraudulent-nature-of-trumps-presidency/