I know I said this prior, but Trump ran to repeal and replace. He was not your candidate for a flat repeal. He’s doing what he said. This is from September of 2015:
Scott Pelley: What’s your plan for Obamacare?
Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 45, 50, 55 percent.
Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?
Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private.” But—
Scott Pelley: Universal health care?
Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.
Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of how?
Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably—
Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?
Donald Trump: —the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-60-minutes-scott-pelley/
This is from right before he assumed office:
We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said.
There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”
Trump has been consistent on this issue, event though his position differs with conservatives. However, he ran as a populist.
Now if Trump hadn’t said that and had said he was going to flat repeal or repeal and replace with something like a Rand Paul plan, then I would say people could criticize him as breaking his promise. He didn’t break it, though.
That said, going after the Freedom Caucus is a mistake. For different reasons than the Freedom Caucus, I think the bill could have caused electoral problems in the future.
Yes, and we (the conservatives in our midst) all agreed when he said it that it’s not what we want and not doable under our constitution. We want the full repeal and replace with free markets that he stated in writing on his original campaign site. But, of course, we also want the whole enchilada of the rest of his very good America-first agenda.
Do this and he will be the greatest president in history.
Will not settle for less.
Full repeal or bust!
Thanks for asking.