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.”
During the election, there was much discussion and clarification on the Obamacare issue. It was always “repeal and replace”, period. Trump’s stump speech was not repeal only. So full repeal is a bait and switch and won’t pass and only serves as an ideological test that won’t get anything done. We already had years of these gems that didn’t get anything done when we didn’t have the Presidency. We are so practiced at it that we actually think the HFC provided us a victory. Sheesh...
Here’s the deal. Anyone calling themselves Conservative that has hitched his wagon to the globalist free trader agenda is neither a Conservative, a constitutionalist or a patriot. Vote accordingly.
Fair enough. Not sure you can lump all of us in that boat as some Trump supporters do, but I see that as valid.
I also didn’t vote for Trump to get a water downed version of BOCare only to be told that because the king of the “art of the deal” says it’s a good bill, just get behind it.
What separates true Conservatives from true Liberals is the recognition that country comes before party, liberty comes before control.
This bill had none of the formers and all of the latters.
Yes candidate Trump has always supported “government care” or socialized medicine. In fact, I have pointed that out many times on this forum and was even suspended for posting videos of candidate Trump in his own words.
However, that is not what the majority of Republicans have been voting for and supporting during Obama’s presidency. Many of the candidates for House and Senate ran on repeal. In fact, a repeal bill passed both the House and the Senate and was later vetoed by Obama (no surprise there).
I believe that President Trump should be afforded the same opportunity to sign the same bill. Move the copy of the 2015 Obamacare repeal bill out of committee and to the floor for a vote in the House.
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.
>> Excuse my ignorance, but what does HFC mean?
House Freedom Caucus.
The Fools!
Since I haven't bought off on the Free Trader globalist agenda I no longer consider myself a Conservative. I am a pro American Patriot instead.
And this is where we break ranks. Passing this bill should have never been about what Trump needed. Killing BOCore should be about what America needed. Simply passing a different form of it after running and railing for seven years about totally taking it out for the sake of the image of one man is not “republican” (little r).
Trump is a representative of the people, not a demigod. We should be more concerned with killing the BO agenda and less concerned about Trump's image. He won, now is time to do what he said he would do and this bill, where I guess is kind of what he said he would do, was a disaster.
Not all Conservatives believe in the globalist agenda.
“The actual process of dismantling it would be in phases, and would be FOUGHT with every parliamentary move in the book, and would not be done overnight.”
Spot on statement. The trouble is that we’re dealing with a few incontinent cranks in the “I Walk on Water” cult. They believe only they embrace conservative principles. If they don’t get 100% of what they want immediately, they cry like little girls.
We just had this big fight about conservative purism during the primary, where a few dozen of these purists were thrown out of Free Republic.
As you stated, the process to create obumacare took a year to pass, and it will take probably an equal amount of time to adequately replace it with free market principles.
Trump is fighting the MSM the “Conservatives” and RINO’s needed to give this would be faux victory for show purposes. We are fighting evil here and standard rules don’t apply.
While Obama was President, the conservatives could pass their do nothing repeal and get everyone on board, but that would never happen now that Trump is President and Reps would have to defend the outcome in their districts. It just isn't going to happen.
What is going to happen? We are going to have a "law and order" President not enforcing the law, i.e. Obamacare? Regardless, we get Obamacare and whatever "bailout" is down the road, which isn't going to be anything like repeal and replace, it will be much worse.
You can’t be a little bit pregnant.
The bill left all of the detestable components of BOCare intact.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory should never be an option.
> Let’s pass what makes sense
I can almost guarantee you that I will think 1/2 of the tax, and immigration, and budget bills won’t make sense to me and even go backward/left. But there are more rinos than conservatives. And everyone wants donor money. Anything that requires legislation is going to be weak especially in the senate if 60 are needed. There’s either a lot of compromise or NOTHING. And NOTHING is not an option in lots of areas.
Abolitionists didn’t vote for Lincoln expecting slavery to be ended in ONLY the parts of the country still controlled by the CSA either (basically leaving it in place in practice).
That was considered “watered-down emancipation” and was only done at a politically opportune moment to only get the process going that eventually led to the emancipation of them all SEVERAL YEARS LATER. <——————
But he had to leave out the ones in the “border states” and in territory they controlled and not to make the war about that like the “purist abolitionists” wanted so that he didnt lose the entire game.
Now if something that we today see as a no-brainer decision took that much word-play, finesse, and structured roll-out over several years and phases, I think we can at least give Trump some fricking room here.
“damaging another major opportunity to do good”
Doing just “something” so as “to do something” is never necessarily “to do good”.
If - and I’m making no judgement - Ryan/Trumpcare was more then 50% pretense of change and reform than actual change of the status quo, then a majority of analysis might have correctly concluded it would not “do good” but continue to do too much harm by what it did not change.
How about the view that a better bill WAS possible, but such a better bill, a more thorough undoing of Obamacare was not on Mr Ryan’s agenda. Why should not Conservatives and moderates in the GOP question why Ryan was willing to settle for too little change and leave too much Obamacare in place.
This wasn't a case of the pure being an enemy of the good. It was a case of the good being the enemy of the bad. And it wasn't just "15 or so conservatives" that "made it impossible to pass the bill favored by nearly every other Republican and by President Donald Trump." Every conservative publication and blog that I read, and every conservative commentator on the radio that I listen to was against this horrible bill.
“BTW, FR still is a conservative site isn’t it?”
I ask myself that quite a bit lately.
It is to the point where I am beginning to not trust and to some extent not wish to be identified as ‘conservative’. The word is becoming muddled.
Clearly, America was founded on the principle of individual Freedom and extremely limited central govt - in fact, enumerated powers only. I previously would assume anyone identified as conservative still promoted that American ideal.
But either we, as a party, are becoming intellectually lazy or we are becoming perhaps fatally infected with the political mark of the beast which virtually all Democrats possess. That mark is the prideful notion that no good shall be done in America if it is not done by the biggest, most impersonal, most inefficient and most corrupted level of govt - the feds.
Hail HFC, the true leaders in this battle!
And long live these purists.
Good lord, if our party can’t understand or acknowledge that, by design, the federal level of government is where purity belongs, then we really are in trouble.
The states basically have unlimited power to be idiots if their populations so desire. The feds are technically not allowed to do that. To the extent the feds increasingly dilute this purity is the extent to which states lose their rightful powers.
To the extent states lose power, then so do individuals. Try to get an appointment with your US Senator - good luck. On the other hand, call your statehouse rep and he/she will probably come over and mow your lawn for the chance to get your vote and hear you out.
The very best way for govt to be seen as legitimate and responsive to the most people is for decisions to be made at the lowest level as practical.
I’m not sure why our party has such trouble marketing Freedom - other than the fact they don’t try. National socialism is the existential threat to true diversity. The reason American style Freedom is both morally and practically superior to federal level socialism is very simple. And pure:
With our original and pure federalist design, socialism can still exist where states are stupid enough to desire it. And like minds can freely gravitate to Left or Right leaning states.
Whereas with national socialism, Freedom has no escape.
The im-purists are condemning us to the latter.
If you are telling me that you voted for Trump because you wanted his first pass at killing BOCare to actually be a further promotion of BOCare, then congrats. He’s your man.
If you are willing to accept these “victories,” which are not victories at all, yet rail against the Establishment for exactly the same things that were in the failed bill, then what have you accomplished?
I don’t see the Lincoln analogy. There he was trying to unify a divided nation by abolishing a principle that the Southern states believed was their inherent right. Here Trump is simply promoting a big government agenda in a different way, against the true will of the people in that Union.
You don’t need to a “purist” to understand that any form of BOCare, watered down or otherwise, should not be an option to a president that was elected on the mandate of destroying all of Obama’s legacy achievements.
Thanks for your analysis.
Still, I’d like to test your assumption that the “purists” acted in “good faith” when they rejected Ryancare because they HONESTLY believed that a “better” bill was possible.
The test is simple.
The “purists” merely need to write the “better” bill that they claim to want AND get that “better bill” passed by Congress.
That’s it! A simple “Put up or shut up!”
If the “purists” DO deliver that “better” bill to the White House, that delivery will prove that the GOP “purists” acted in good faith and truly are patriots.
But, if they DON’T deliver that “better” bill, then the “purists” will have revealed something else....
BTW, rumor has it that the “Freedom Caucus” is planning to block construction of the border wall because -— wait for it — that wall is “...not high enough?”.
"Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted," the bill states.
Mo Brooks is a member of The House Freedom Caucus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ask your Congress Critter to sign the discharge petition for US Representative Mo Brooks's bill titled, "Obamacare Repeal Act"!!!!!!!!!!!
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