Don’t count chickens yet
JANESVILLE, Wis.—This is Paul Ryan country. Sometimes they love him. Sometimes they get frustrated with him. Sometimes they worry he’ll become part of the establishment.
Yet they fundamentally believe the Wisconsin Republican’s political intentions always come from his roots and are grounded in his upbringing in this working-class Kenosha County town.
They also know he had to get something done with Obamacare, even if it was imperfect.
Journalists and handicappers in Washington, D.C., have obsessed for the last 10 days over the electoral impact of a vote taken by House Republicans to repeal Obamacare. Most forecast that the Republicans’ replacement for the Affordable Care Act will be less popular than the original law.
They have also obsessed over the electoral impact of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.
In Washington the general belief is that both portend the collapse of Republican majorities in the House and Senate in the November 2018 elections. Not so much in Wisconsin, even among the most strident Democrats, and especially with regard to Comey’s firing.
Republicans have campaigned aggressively on repealing Obamacare in four congressional midterm elections. Failing to follow through on that pledge would have thrown gasoline on what has already been a decade-long bonfire among the GOP base.
Since 2010 Republicans have engaged in a great civil war in their primaries between the incumbent Washington wing and the fire-breathing outsiders—a war that eventually lifted Trump over a dozen more heralded and politically experienced candidates in the 2016 presidential nomination process.
Ryan’s approval numbers nationally have slid considerably since February according to the most recent Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll. Back home, however, in the counties that hug the Wisconsin-Illinois border, Ryan had far more to lose by letting the Affordable Care Act stand than by pushing a repeal.
Wave elections are not created by the press corps. They happen naturally from the ground up, and they include a constituency of Republicans, Democrats and independent voters unhappy with the actions of the president and Congress.
That is not happening yet, despite the best efforts of the press and Democrats to try to create that illusion.
Progressive Democrats are unhappy with efforts to repeal Obamacare, and they are going to show up at town halls, get lots of attention and make the news.
But the real wave will be built growing your universe of resistance. To date, that still has not happened.