Posted on 05/03/2017 9:33:26 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Former House Speaker warns divided GOP may 'need to erase the board and start over again'
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested GOP lawmakers are almost at an impasse in their effort to repeal and replace Obamacare where they “need to erase the board and start over again,” during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
Republican leaders in the House have been furiously attempting to convince skeptical moderates in the caucus to back the latest package to reform the nation’s health care system. Gingrich bemoaned the internal divisions in the GOP that are preventing the Congress from implementing President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“This is so misdesigned as a process that you now have — when you start solving the Freedom Caucus problem, you start losing moderates. When you start fixing the moderate problem, you start losing the Freedom Caucus,” Gingrich said. “And they almost need to erase the board and start over again.”
Noting that “the ox is in the ditch,” the former House Speaker said if Republicans can’t “get it out of the ditch this week,” they must “take a deep breath, erase the board, start with the basics, build the coalition back together.”
The current bill was the product of negotiations between the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House and moderate Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-New Jersey). It has been backed by GOP leadership who reportedly hope to bring the bill to the floor for a vote Thursday.
Multiple reports indicate Republicans remain short by just a handful of votes.
“This is the kind of process where you have to quietly listen to every member, understand in advance what their concerns are, and try to find a way to answer their concerns,” Gingrich said.
In order to address these differences, Gingrich recommended that the House members go back to the basics and revisit what exactly they mean by “dismantling Obamacare” and what the American people “will not tolerate.”
“Well, the highest value the public has is continuing the ability to not lose your insurance if you have a pre-[existing] condition. It’s like a 94-95 percent issue. Because health is life and death,” Gingrich noted. “And in the end, people are going to ask personal questions. You know, what about me? What about my condition? What about my cousin, or my niece or my daughter?”
“And if you can’t answer that — if members aren’t trained enough to give a positive answer that people can relax, they all — nobody’s going to trust Washington,” Gingrich added. “That’s one of the great lessons of 2016. If they were going to trust Washington, they would have elected Hillary [Clinton].”
Gingrich pointed to former President Ronald Reagan’s understanding of the American people as the instigators and backbone of all of his policies. Although Gingrich praised Trump for understanding this concept and embracing it so well during his 2016 presidential campaign, he expressed his concern that the president and his administration may be putting too much emphasis on “negotiating with Congress inside Washington.”
“You can’t negotiate inside Washington. You don’t have the leverage for change if all you’re doing is negotiating with Congress inside Washington,” Gingrich insisted. “Reagan understood that if he had the country on his side, they would pressure Congress into being for him. And I think right now this administration does too much insider negotiating and does too little reaching out the American people, educating the American people, and recruiting the American people.”
As for the budget compromise Congress reached over the weekend, the former House Speaker insisted that it isn’t as bad as many conservatives are making it out to be. Critics point to the lack of border wall funding and the continued funding of Planned Parenthood, among other grievances.
"They actually have the money to build the wall in the bill. What the Democrats agreed to block out was concrete," Gingrich said. "The fact is, they’re going to build the wall. They have a steel wall that’s already been put up in some places. They’re going to build more of it. They’ve got a tremendous amount of money in this bill to do that."
"And the Democrats are kidding themselves if they think they stopped the wall," Gingrich added. "The same thing’s true with Planned Parenthood. The money’ that’s being allocated does not mention Planned Parenthood. It’s going to administered by [Health and Human Services Secretary] Tom Price and Tom Price is not going to give it to Planned Parenthood."
If anything, the former House Speaker lamented the fact that the Trump administration has been unable to effectively communicate its vision in a positive and informed manner to the American people.
"But they’re so unable to articulate these things that it really worries me that we’re doing more good things than we can explain, and we’re getting blamed for things that aren’t true that we can’t even defend," Gingrich said.
I believe he needs to be able to say, "Hey, I tried." I think a few allies in Congress might be helpful, so that he has some somewhere.
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