Hehehehohohohahaha — Trumpcare LOSES — Obamacare WINS…

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post

• ‘We just pulled it,’ Trump tells The Post amid GOP revolt

• ‘Hello, Bob’: Trump called a Washington Post reporter to say the health bill was dead. Here's what he said.

• ‘The closer’? The inside story of how Trump tried — and failed — to make a deal on health care

• Trump learns that dealmaking is not the same as leadership

• The Fix: Democrats can't stop happy-tweeting about GOP's failed bill

• Analysis: Trump didn't pledge repeal in 64 days. He pledged it in one.

• List: The Republicans who forced Trump to pull health bill

• Time for Trump to call Nancy Pelosi

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Trump's colossal failure

The emperor has no clothes.

By JENNIFER RUBIN | 4:05PM EDT - Friday, March 24, 2017

HOUSE SPEAKER Paul D. Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin) avoided total humiliation in wriggling out of the president's order to take what he knew would be a losing vote on the American Health Care Act. That he had to go, whip list in hand, to the White House, tells us how far he has been reduced in stature by this process.

In refusing to take a vote that apparently would not even have been close, Ryan at least avoided unnecessarily putting his own members at risk (e.g., moderates who were asked to take unpopular votes, conservatives who would disappoint the hard-edged Heritage Action and other groups working against the bill). He also retained a smidgen of his own stature. Had he gone forward he would have effectively forfeited Congress's standing as a co-equal branch of government.

Ryan will remain speaker because no one else wants the job, but in a sense he does not “lead” the House Republicans, let alone the House. He is continuously caught in the crossfire between the moderates and the far right, just as his predecessor was. He will have his hands full keeping the House together in the future on controversial, “hard” votes. The lesson members learned was to look after their own interests. Calling Ryan and Trump's bluff worked well for them.

While Ryan loses stature, Trump does not necessarily gain any. Previously he claimed victory merely by decimating the opposition (GOP challengers, Hillary Clinton, a reporter, etc.). Now Ryan's loss is not Trump's gain. (It might be Stephen K. Bannon's gain, but not Trump, who needs to show results.) Trump shares responsibility for a bill he endorsed and lobbied hard to get. (Press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump “left everything on the field.”) His rallies and threats and his vapid cheerleading count for nothing when it comes to governance. What worked in a campaign no longer serves any useful purpose.

Trump now will rightly be seen as a weakened, if not inept, president. His attention span lasts only a couple of weeks before, starved for adulation, he moves onto the next thing in search of affirmation. Democrats know this, as do Republican opponents. You can wait this guy out.

Trump may choose to shake up his staff, but the bravado and the willful ignorance about policy come from the top. His defiance of norms and refusal to operate in the real world are formidable hurdles that impair his ability to do his job. Unless he changes (at 70 years old, he is unlikely to) he will lose over and over again.

Health-care reform surely is dead for now, most likely for the remainder of Trump's term. Trump, rather than slaying the Freedom Caucus, let the Freedom Caucus defeat him. If Trump wants to get anything done, they reason, he will have to go through them. If Trump wanted — as he was willing to do with a very right-wing health-care bill that contradicted his populist ethos and many specific promises — to turn right in order to appease the emboldened Freedom Caucus, he would still be left with opposition from House moderates and the Senate. In trying to govern like Senator Ted Cruz (Republican-Texas), he'll find himself without popular or legislative support. And if Trump pursues that course, he will wind up sacrificing his base without much to show for it.

In short, Trump now stands as the emperor with no clothes — vulnerable, weakened and mocked. Sad!

• Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.

__________________________________________________________________________

More on this topic:

 • VIDEO: The many ups and downs of the GOP health-care battle

• Will Trump’s health-care plan cover congenital lying?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/03/24/trumps-colossal-failure

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Donald Trump played a game of chicken with House Republicans.
Then he blinked. Bigly!

Dealmaker Donald comes up short.

By CHRIS CILLIZZA | 4:40PM EDT - Friday, March 24, 2017

DONALD TRUMP was elected in large part on one, loud promise: I know how to make deals these normal politicians don't.

Part of that mystique — as outlined in his best-selling book “The Art of the Deal” — is the willingness to call his rival's bluff, to put his cards on the table and ask everyone else to do the same.

That's what Trump did on Thursday night after a postponement of the planned vote to begin the process of reforming the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans needed to put up or shut up, Trump insisted. Despite being told the votes simply weren't there, Trump pushed forward — arguing that it was now or never.

It was vintage Trump, taking a gamble no other typical politician would take: Force a vote on a massive part of your legislative agenda with an uncertain outcome.

Then Trump blinked.

Hours after Trump huddled with Speaker Paul D. Ryan at the White House, he told The Washington Post's Bob Costa that he had decided congressional Republicans should pull the legislation. The votes simply weren't there, and the possibility of real embarrassment on the House floor existed.

Sure. But, Trump was elected as an outsider — someone who ran against the system. Why not force that system to go on the record with either their support or opposition?



Now begins the blame game. And there's plenty to go around. The White House was already starting to point the finger at Ryan for making health-care reform the first legislative priority of the new Republican-controlled Washington. Rank and file members were suggesting that simply not enough time was given to thinking about what was in the bill before it was offered. Establishment Republicans blamed the House Freedom Caucus for their refusal to compromise.



All true! But Trump is the president of the United States. Trump ran as the only person who could solve the major problems facing the country. Trump was the one who billed himself as the dealmaker extraordinaire, the guy who had faced down people in corporate boardrooms all over the country and all over the world — and won.

But when the time came to push all his chips to the middle of the table, Trump folded. Period. Beyond the spin, that is what happened here. If Trump had continued to insist that the bill be put to a vote, trust me that Ryan would have done it despite his reservations.

What you are likely to hear over the next few hours and days is that Trump did so because no deal is better than a bad deal. The problem with that argument is Trump's Twitter paper trail. On Friday, as the House prepared to vote, Trump tweeted that this legislation was a great chance for Republicans to make good on their campaign promises — calling the legislation a “great plan.”



Trump will, as he always does, somehow declare victory and move on. “The beauty,” Trump told Costa, “is that they [Democrats] own Obamacare. So when it explodes, they come to us, and we make one beautiful deal for the people.”

The simple fact, however, is that Trump wanted this deal, pushed for this deal, called his own party's bluff on this deal and then walked away when it appeared as though the deal wouldn't come together.

Dealmaker Donald played chicken. But he lost his nerve at the last minute.

• Chris Cillizza writes The Fix, a politics blog for The Washington Post, and hosts the Ciquizza podcast, a weekly news quiz [Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher].

__________________________________________________________________________

More on this topic:

 • VIDEO: Trump on health care bill: ‘We couldn't quite get there’

 • VIDEO: Ryan: ‘We came up short’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/24/donald-trump-played-a-game-of-chicken-with-house-republicans-then-he-blinked

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

EDITORIAL: The real way Republicans can deal with Obamacare?
Actually fix it.

Trump and the GOP shouldn't react to their health-care failure by sabotaging the existing system.

By EDITORIAL BOARD | 7:14PM EDT - Friday, March 24, 2017


President Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. — Photograph: Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg.

THE NEXT TIME someone argues that a businessman would manage the country better than an experienced politician, remember this past week. The attempt by President Trump and House Republicans to force through a health-care bill scorned by experts across the spectrum, projected to be a disaster for aging and low-income people and opposed by a large majority of Americans ended in debacle. Now the danger is that a wounded president and his GOP allies will act on their sore feelings by irresponsibly attacking the existing health-care system in other ways.

The right course for Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans following their decisive defeat would be to ensure that the system created by President Barack Obama is properly overseen, for the sake of the millions who depend on it. That would mean abandoning their unilateral and unpopular legislative push to replace Obamacare with a radically different scheme. None of the major repeal-and-replace proposals they have offered would improve the system — and repealing Obamacare without a replacement would invite disaster in health-care markets.

Unfortunately, there are signs that Mr. Trump will act rashly on his own, without Congress, weakening Obamacare on purpose or by sheer incompetence. Several times in recent weeks, Mr. Trump suggested that it would be savvier for Republicans to let the system persist — and collapse. Independent experts, including the Congressional Budget Office just this month, predict no such crumbling. Yet they may not have satisfactorily considered the likelihood of administrative sabotage: The Trump administration has already undermined federal enrollment efforts and the individual mandate that holds the system together. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who would lead any executive-branch regulatory overhaul, has shown himself to be a rigid ideologue on health-care policy.

Mr. Trump should not imagine that angry Americans will blame Democrats, who are totally locked out of power, if he presides over an unraveling of the system. Public reaction to the replacement effort, including in polls, showed substantial support for Obamacare and rejection of the Republican effort to destroy it.

A better option would be the one that Republicans have explored least: actually fixing the system's flaws. Mr. Trump could use his executive power to shore it up — enhancing enforcement of the individual mandate and encouraging people to sign up. Then he should approach Democrats to see if there is room for an agreement on a repair bill. This would have to be an authentic deal, not an ultimatum, in which Democrats traded things Republicans want, such as medical liability reform and some limited regulatory reform, in exchange for things they should want, such as enhanced subsidies for vulnerable people.

For the good of the country, Republicans must finally admit two things. First, Obamacare is mostly working and millions will be hurt if it is abruptly repealed. Second, the GOP is incapable of the near-unanimity on health-care policy that is required to act without Democrats.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-way-republicans-can-deal-with-obamacare-actually-fix-it/2017/03/24/cef5eba6-10c8-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html

[Donald]

Just sort of picking up the fact that you don't seem to want to talk about your idol ending apartheid in NZ...Is there some sort of problem🙄

...does this mean you are no longer part of the Winnie arse licking club😳