Thursday, March 09, 2017

NO, TRUMP DOES NOT HAVE A "BRILLIANT" PLAN IF OBAMACARE REPEAL FAILS

If the Obamacare repeal effort fails, the president says he'll just start pointing the finger at Democrats.
In an Oval Office meeting featuring leaders of conservative groups that already lining up against House Republicans' plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, President Donald Trump revealed his plan in the event the GOP effort doesn't succeed: Allow Obamacare to fail and let Democrats take the blame, sources at the gathering told CNN.
Greg Sargent thinks this is "brilliant," because GOP voters already think Obamacare is a failure. But Hot Air's Allahpundit, a smart right-wing analyst, is absolutely right:
Yeah, I’m not sure “elect more of us after we failed to fix health care” is a slam-dunk 2018 message for Republicans, no matter how bad the zombie ObamaCare exchanges might get. It’s an especially tough sell coming from Trump, who got elected vowing there’d be so much winning during his presidency that we’d get bored of winning. “Mr. Trump is the purest Green Lantern candidate we’ve seen in recent years,” wrote Brendan Nyhan in 2015, comparing America’s ideal of an omnipotent president in control of events to a superhero with magical powers. You can’t run as the Green Lantern and then get beat two months into your term on your absolute top priority, particularly when your party controls Congress too.
Allahpundit thinks this would be good for Democrats in 2018 -- but what he envisions after that makes me a bit queasy:
Swing voters may well conclude that the problem with both reform plans, first ObamaCare and then the GOP bill, was that they were produced by parties with total control of government who didn’t feel a need to compromise with the minority. Turning Congress blue and having Schumer and/or Pelosi negotiate with Trump would solve that problem. That’s the only way a failing ObamaCare will be rescued by true bipartisan reform.
Is that what's going to happen? Democrats will win back the Senate and/or (more likely) the House, then voters will demand that Democrats and Republicans met each other halfway on health care? Or the mainstream media will clamor for this and (inevitably) chastise Democrats if it doesn't happen?

You know it can't happen. Republicans still won't be in a mood to move an inch to the left -- and, of course, GOP voters will say Republicans got a thumpin' at the polls (if that happens) because they weren't conservative enough. But it'll be Democrats who'll be tried and convicted of intransigence if there's never an Obamacare improvement bill.

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