I have to go soon, but before I do, just so you know I didn’t mean to be nasty...I’m really not trying to be, it’s just the way I talk politics...so on that note I do apologize if you felt that way.
ps: Yes Ted Cruz is working on his 2020 campaign...take that to the bank!!
The most important question for Republicans now is whether the members of the Freedom Caucus will find themselves newly emboldened in ways that may bring the new president more defeats — or whether Mr. Ryan will do what former Speaker John A. Boehner could not, and find a way to shred their influence for good.
“If you are defined by your opposition to leadership, it’s hard to be part of a governing coalition,” said Alex Conant, a onetime aide to Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who was once a Tea Party star. “Their opposition to Trump’s health care bill should surprise nobody who’s paid attention for the last six years. Even the world’s best negotiator can’t make a deal with someone who never compromises.”
But the Freedom Caucus has never been about compromise. In 2011, it picked a huge, costly fight over Planned Parenthood. In 2013, it orchestrated a government shutdown over funding for the health care law. Then, in its most striking move, it deposed Mr. Boehner in 2015. The common thread: It has continuously been an adversary of legislation itself.
But after years of opposing power — both in the White House, which was occupied by a Democrat, and in the leadership of their own party — the conservatives were offered a chance to negotiate directly with the president and his budget director, a former Freedom Caucus member, over the bill to replace the Affordable Care Act. The members pushed and pushed Mr. Trump to the far right edges of policy, just as they have done for years on other bills. But they still could not get to “yes,” and therefore became part owners of the expansive health law they were trying to undo.
“They made the perfect the enemy of the good,” said Representative Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas. “I don’t know how they can go back home and tell people they voted to keep Obamacare, voted to keep funding Planned Parenthood.”
Indeed, members of the Freedom Caucus — which is supported by outside conservative groups — have often claimed the mantle of pure conservatism, but their tactics have been seen by many in their party as uniformly counterproductive.
Time after time, they undermined Republican leaders’ efforts to secure wins for the conservative cause by overreaching and demanding the impossible.
They have anointed Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina as their leader and principal spokesman. But they occasionally get help from three senators sympathetic to their cause: Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah.
At critical times, House conservatives have forced their party to make deals with Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader — an idea anathema to most Republicans, who would seethe.
This time, by negotiating with Mr. Trump on the complex issue of health care, a measure whose complexity he did not seem to fully grasp, they moved an already contentious bill further and further to the right, eliminating too many benefits to keep moderate and other conservative members on board. Even Mr. Trump was said to be taken aback by their attempts to remove things Republicans have long promised to keep, like health insurance benefits for children up to 26 years old.
Given that the House and Senate majorities were built on a promise to repeal and replace Mr. Obama’s signature health care law, many lawmakers fear electoral repercussions. “It is painfully ironic that members from safe, conservative congressional districts who can’t ever quite seem to get to ‘yes’ make it harder to enact good, conservative public policy like repealing Obamacare,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist and former aide to Mr. Boehner.