The Republican dumpster fire is an opening for Democrats
Will anyone be left standing when the Republican circular firing squad runs out of ammunition? Or will everybody just reload and keep blasting away, leaving Democrats to clean up the bloody mess?
The political moment we’re living through is truly remarkable, but not in a good way. Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, so we’re basically in their hands. But they have nothing approaching consensus on what they should be doing — and they have failed to show basic competence at doing much of anything.
This absurd situation was illustrated Thursday when House Speaker Paul Ryan, appearing on “CBS This Morning,” tried to explain why he wants to lead yet another suicide charge up Health Care Hill.
Ryan said he worries that if Republicans don’t repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass some sort of replacement, then President Trump will “just go work with Democrats to try and change Obamacare and that’s not, that’s hardly a conservative thing. … If this Republican Congress allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good, I worry we’ll push the president into working with Democrats. He’s been suggesting that as much.”
Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, usually a man of measured words, responded with a barbed tweet: “We have come a long way in our country when the speaker of one party urges a president NOT to work with the other party to solve a problem.”
Trump went on Twitter as well, primarily to lash out at the House GOP conservatives who helped scuttle the slapdash American Health Care Act that Ryan tried — and disastrously failed — to ram through last week: “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, &fast. We must fight them, &Dems, in 2018!”
But which Republican agenda? The House majority wants ideological purity of the kind found in Ayn Rand novels and the writings of obscure Austrian economists. The Senate majority favors traditional conservative policies and seeks self-preservation. Trump seeks adulation, a crown of laurels and the strewing of rose petals at his feet.
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/the-republican-dumpster-fire-is-an-opening-for-democrats/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=3ce58f84af-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-3ce58f84af-228635337
