After spending years gumming up government under former President Barack Obama, the Republican Party is having a tough time getting the ball rolling again. The GOP has held a majority in Congress for years now, and haven’t passed anything of note during that time. That made sense under Obama, but now that Republican President Donald Trump is in office, you’d think they’d want to get things moving. Like on healthcare, for instance.
That hasn’t happened yet.
The GOP failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) showed the cracks in the party despite the commanding majorities in both the House and the Senate. The Freedom Caucus (aka Tea Party) felt the bill was too much like Obamacare, while the more moderate members of the GOP thought it cut too much from programs like Medicare.
Despite a seven year rallying cry to do away with Obamacare, this failure now casts major doubt on what the Republicans can actually accomplish during the next four years. They’re not getting much of a unifier in President Trump, either, who spent this week berating and threatening his own party. GOP Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota hears the warning bells loud and clear:
“I think we have to do some soul-searching internally to determine whether or not we are even capable as a governing body.”
Republican pollster Whit Ayres is frank in his diagnosis of the GOP problem:
“There are some folks in the Republican House caucus who have yet to make the pivot from complaining to governing. And this is a White House controlled by a politician who is not really trying to lead a party.”
This leaves House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled in too many different directions to unify the party without help. And if Trump won’t help, the political mountains may be too steep for the Republicans to climb.
That makes the next four years really easy for the Democrats. If your opponents are going to destroy themselves, all you have to do is sit back and watch.
Watch two experts on the PBS NewsHour discuss the GOP healthcare failures here:
Featured image from Wikimedia available under fair use in the Public Domain.
