BUT ARTFUL TURN FOR TRUMP
It’s the best defeat he’s ever won.
The demise of the GOP’s health care reform plan may look like a devastating loss for President Trump right now, but in the long term, it’s a political gain. He should bid Trumpcare good riddance.
This bill was a loser from the start, and would have tarred Trump for the next four years. He doesn’t want to be responsible for the exploding costs of health care and read endless stories about poor people losing their insurance.
It’s not even clear that Trump was 100 percent behind this bill. He’s the self-declared master dealmaker. If he really wanted, he could have cut a deal. But instead he cut it loose.
The president didn’t seem to be too heartbroken after House Republicans decided that a mercy killing was better than a humiliating defeat on the floor.
“Perhaps the best thing that can happen is exactly what happened today,” he said.
No wonder. Health care is a nightmare and as Trump said, the current Obama law hasn’t stopped the skyrocketing costs. Trumpcare in all likelihood would have had just as disastrous a rollout as Obamacare.
Trump’s plan was largely written by a current long-term congressman and a former longterm congressman. So it was doomed from the start. And Trump and the Republicans did a terrible job of selling this.
They couldn’t even explain to middle-income voters how the health care bill would have worked. Phase 1? Phase 3? Tax credits?
All that most people heard from the media is that millions would lose their health care.
Democrats and the media would have pummeled Trump if his replacement bill had become law. Big breaks for the rich. Cuts for Medicaid. Who wants that?
Trump can explain away his health care defeat by blaming it on the dysfunctional Congress.
Let lawmakers try to figure it out and explain to their constituents what happened.
So now the president should take his lumps and move on to the economy. Trump was elected because of his promise to bring more jobs, and that’s what he should do.