Posted on 03/28/2017 4:43:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
According to The New York Times, 10 moderates, 15 conservatives, and eight other Republicans would have voted against the Republican repeal and replace Obamacare bill. So, then, 15 or so conservatives made it impossible to pass the bill favored by nearly every other Republican and by President Donald Trump. If that is the case, what we have here is another conservative example of purism and principle damaging another major opportunity to do good.
The first purist conservative example were the Never-Trumpers, who believed it was better for Hillary Clinton to be elected president and for the Left to have four more years of presidential power than for Donald Trump to win.
There were valid reasons to wonder whether Donald Trump was a conservative, and valid reasons to oppose him in the primaries. There were no valid reasons to oppose him in the general election. I said all these things then, and have thus far been validated beyond my wildest dreams.
In terms of policy, Donald Trump is a conservative dream. From appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, to approving the Keystone XL pipeline, to weakening the fanatical, hysterical, and tyrannical EPA, to appointing an ambassador to the United Nations who has moral contempt for that immoral institution, to backing Israel, to seeking to reduce economy-choking regulations on business – indeed essentially everything conservatives would wish for in a president – Donald Trump is almost too good to be true.
But he’s still not good enough for those conservatives who remain Never-Trumpers or good enough for the House members of Freedom Caucus, at least with regard to the repeal and replace Obamacare bill that President Trump worked so hard to have passed.
It is quite possible that I and most other conservatives who supported the repeal bill agree with just about every criticism of the bill that House conservatives made.
But, just as in the general election the question wasn't whether candidate Trump was our ideal, the question now wasn’t whether the bill was our ideal. The question during the election was: What will happen if the Democrats and the Left win the presidency again? And the question now was and remains: What will happen if the Republicans don’t pass a bill favored by all but 25-30 Republican Congressmen and, most important, by President Trump?
But purists don’t ask such questions. They live in a somewhat different world than the rest of us who actually agree with them on everything. Because we don’t ask what is ideologically pure and true to our principles. We ask: What is closest to our ideology and to our principles?
Or, to put it another way, we have one larger principle than even the conservative ones we share with the purists – defeating the left because that is the No. 1 priority of those who cherish Western Civilization and regard America as the last best hope for humanity.
The conservative Never-Trumpers and conservatives who voted for Trump had everything in common except for that overriding principle. Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.
Passing even a tepid first bill to begin the process of dismantling the crushing burden of Obamacare would have been an important first step in weakening the left – not only by beginning to repeal Obamacare but by strengthening the Trump presidency and the president’s ability to go forward with tax-reform and other parts of his conservative agenda. The president is now damaged, and the Republican Party looks ludicrous – what other word can one use to describe the party that passed 60 resolutions in seven years to repeal Obamacare and then can’t pass a bill to repeal or replace Obamacare when it is given the House, the Senate, and the presidency?
Make no mistake, ye of pure heart, this may well be the last time in your lifetimes that Republicans control both Houses of Congress and have a conservative president. And understand that time is not on our side; there are cfongressional elections in a year and nine months.
Providence or luck made it possible to have a conservative president. Act accordingly.
And perhaps consider inscribing on the walls of your House and Senate offices a motto as relevant as “In God We Trust” – “The Best Is the Enemy of the Better.”
The HFC could have had a lot of clout with Trump in future legislation if they had grown up and played ball now they are another problem to deal with.
I really like Prager U but he is wrong on this one about the FC at least. The problem is that whoever wrote that bill had something else in mind as purists, maybe campaign donations.
Fixed it.
You didnt pay a lick of attention to what I wrote, did you?
“You don’t need to a “purist” to understand that any form of slavery, watered down or otherwise, should not be an option to a president that was elected on the mandate of millions to destroy this detestable institution from our continent and run the scoundrels from all the union to the fire of hell!! The president is merely wears the hat of a abolitionist, but it is black with the skin of the slavemaster’s captives that still walk the land of the free Union!!!
If you are willing to accept this “emancipation”, which is not emancipation at all, yet rail against slavery, then what have you accomplished? “
This is pretty much what you sound like.
And in this case the process had not even really started, and the guy has not even been president for 100 DAYS!!!
Now you have NOTHING. Not one damn thing moving in Congress. OCare is still as it was.
So now what?
If these guys wanted to make their grand stand, then make it when the final bill comes back to the House after they affected it all the way through the process.
Whoever opposed it, for whatever reason, did Trump and all of us a big favor.
There is no ‘purism’ about it. It was horrible with devastating political consequences.
You and I have danced this dance before.
You say vote “yes” on the bill to promote the mandate in order to gain a political victory but then talk about killing the bill later on when the mandate is all but impossible to kill.
And no, I generally don’t read much of your stuff because most of it is either inane or insane.
So what made you think that it passing the House = it becomes law?>>>>>
Duh?
You know that the correct provisions for the People would not be added in the Senate. They needed to be in before it was sent to the Senate so that the Senate would have to justify removing them ( which they could not).
Also there was no need to use the “reconciliation” process.The House Parliamentarian Meme and the “Byrd Rule” were a foil.
There would never be a phase II and a Phase III. How stupid did Ryan think America is ? Ryan is a lying son of a whore. And now Trump is not much better after trying to ram this lobbyists bill down the throats of Peoples personal health care issues.They both should be ashamed of themselves.
HFC , all the way!
Trump wants to ba a lame duck? We can hand that to him on a platter.
Simple, it already has passed the House AND the Senate. Few, very few, who previously supported the repeal would dare face the wrath of the voters to now change their vote and oppose the repeal.
The Democrats are ecstatic and a filibuster attempt is probably coming for Goursich now after this defeat. He was a sure thing now they feel they can spend capital to defeat him. Optics matter is the wide scheme of things.
Hey Candor screw you. By some devine miracle have been blessed with a President who is not a globalist and “conservatives” can’t take it. F the HFC.
“HFC , all the way!
Trump wants to ba a lame duck? We can hand that to him on a platter.”
Yeah....ok.
And movement ideologues wonder why after 25 years of running their mouths, they have jack s*it to show for conservatism other than a nation further to the left?
You guys vastly overestimate your power and reach because you always go for the grand dramatic sweep, while the left inches all the way to the goal.
Trump didnt get where he did because of you guys. Hell he had to beat the establishment conservative wing of virtuous dramatic losers + the GOPe + the Democrats.
Much of the right went with him because we are sick of getting nowhere while we are told that we should feel honored to lose so righteously.
from a group of people that couldn’t do beans against Obama, I’ll advise you to put your tiny rockets back in your pants before the bulk of the right gets tired of your act.
“And no, I generally don’t read much of your stuff because most of it is either inane or insane.”
Says the people that has all but left OCare in place.
You guys are the “sane” ones alright.
I’ll stand by being more right about events since Trump started running than you goobers that have made an art of misreading virtually everything the past 2 years.
tortoise vs. hare ...
I know, or at least hope, that YOU know that Paul Ryan = “K Street Chaep labor lackey” and “Amnesty pimp”. If you don’t but instead think the Freedom Caucus fits that equation, you are deluded.
Prager reflects my views pretty much here. I think conservatives too often are afflicted with the disease of wanting to stick 100% to principle and get nothing rather than compromise and get a much better deal. This mindset could very well destroy the Trump presidency, if he doesn’t do something to put a stop to it early. Will they try to derail his next two projects, taxes (including a border tax) and infrastructure? I very much hope not. He can’t afford to have three huge defeats in a row handed to him by his own party and have any chance of being an effective president.
It might still work out, but I expect that the next health care bill pretty much of necessity will have to be quite a bit further to the left than the Ryan tax breaks focused/no mandate plan. The window for using reconciliation in the Senate is closing soon. The next bill will probably need the support of several Democratic senators. Even if the nuclear option could somehow pass for this sort of bill, I really doubt the bill the Freedom Caucus wants could even get 50 Republican votes in the Senate, much less the 60 it will probably need. There are way more than just 2 moderate Republicans in the Senate who wouldn’t go along with that.
I see many commentators, including conservative ones like Lou Dobbs, were complaining that 24 million people would no longer have health insurance if the bill passed. Since this was the biggest complaint about the bill among the general population, it seems more than possible that next time around the government will somehow guarantee coverage for all these people, so no one will loose anything. Instead of saving up to $1 trillion over the long term like Ryan’s bill was supposed to, the new one will likely add significantly to the deficit, but on the brighter side it will be much more politically popular. I just hope no mandate is placed in the new bill in order to get enough votes to pass—although I think it was a Breitbart commentator who suggested that mandating minimum catastrophic coverage might be Trump’s compromise with the Dems to get a bill that can actually pass and that has things he wants like selling across state lines and promotion of competition between insurance companies.
Oh well, at least a bill with some Dem votes is more likely not to be repealed once the Dems get back in power. It’s just too bad that since Trump and the Repubs wanted to get tax reform passed via reconciliation, they have to make their cuts revenue neutral and they were counting on using the health care savings to allow them to slash taxes. Now that task is going to be a lot harder to work out (but then again we may get extra budget cuts, so it may be a blessing in disguise if they can make it work). Of course, all the gloating from the Dems celebrating the retention of their beloved Obamacare is a little hard to take too…
Purists killed the constitution too, bwahahahahaha.
Even if the wall is 100 feet high it won't probably not be high enough for the Freedom Caucus, and with out rolled barbed wires on top, the wall wouldn't help anyway. Also on a fence there should be rolled barb wires from the bottom to the top and along the top.
It does make sense though.
Lets see who supports a repeal when there is no backstop of a presidential veto. Lets see if President Trump is truly behind a repeal.
Otherwise, the GOP is just a bunch of hypocrites.
I believe you'd find that an actual majority are hypocrites.
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