Bipartisan-ship has been sunk
S AY THE word “bipartisan” and hopeful hearts go aflutter. Even in the worst of times, there is magical faith in the idea that our better angels will prevail and party lines will vanish if Washington puts America first.
Green shoots of the faith emerged in the White House soon after the GOP attempt to repeal ObamaCare crashed and burned. President Trump and aides excoriated some fellow Republicans and talked of working with Democrats to find a solution.
“I think if we had bipartisan [support,] we could have a healthcare bill that would be the ultimate,” Trump said.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer was happy to say yes — as long Trump swallowed a poison pill. “Once the Republicans take repeal off the table, we’re willing to work with them,” he responded.
In other words, break your campaign promise, hand us victory and we’ll work together.
So much for bipartisanship in 2017. May it rest in peace.
Although Trump is the least ideological president in memory, the love-hate reaction he engenders reinforces the polarization Barack Obama left behind. While votes from members of Dem-leaning unions helped Trump win key states, pols like Schumer have concluded that their hard-left donors and activists want confrontation, not cooperation.
That means no bipartisanship in the short run, and a likely filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Trump’s plan to tackle tax reform also will be a singleparty effort, with Dems already cranking out their usual talking points about giveaways to the rich and corporate welfare.
The forecast, then, is for more dreariness bordering on hopelessness — with one potential bright spot. The only way forward is for Trump to unite the Republican Party.
If he can do that, Dems will be forced to engage in substantive negotiations because the alternative is exclusive Republican rule on every piece of legislation. In effect, GOP unity could force Dems to the table for at least a semblance of bipartisanship that would be good for the country.
But if Trump can’t unite his party, if its circular firing squad is permanent, major parts of his agenda could be DOA. And Dems will be giddy at the funeral.
Trump’s predicament is significant. Even if the House had voted to repeal ObamaCare, prospects in the Senate were poor. With only two Republican votes to spare, there was no obvious path to a majority for any bill, certainly not the one Paul Ryan crafted in the House. Ominously, already there are predictions that tax reform will get trapped in the same divide.
That makes a unified GOP es- sential, yet to have a chance at that, Trump must first fix his White House. The reports of infighting and backstabbing can no longer be dismissed as fake news or the dirty tricks of Obama holdovers. Some of the gripes are coming from the people Trump hired.
Much of the ire is directed at Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and he may well be in over his head. But it’s not possible that Priebus alone was responsible for all the mistakes in the ObamaCare fi- asco, including several Trump committed himself.
Recall that the president embraced Ryan’s bill without fully understanding what it contained or the passions driving GOP opponents, then spent precious capital twisting arms and making concessions. When all that failed to get instant results, he demanded a final vote in 24 hours.
And now, after blasting the Freedom Caucus Republicans and other conservative groups for opposing the bill, the White House is suggesting it was a “bad bill” after all.
Ok, let us know when you make up your mind.
Something else Trump did also was confusing. As soon as he and Ryan agreed to pull the bill because they didn’t have the votes, Trump called reporters from The New York Times and Washington Post to give them the scoop.
These are the same papers that led the charge to kill Trump since he won the nomination. He calls both “dishonest” and press secretary Sean Spicer often refuses to call on reporters from those papers at press briefings.
Yet the bias is apparently forgiven when the president wants to get ahead of the news. So the establishment, biased media is no longer part of the swamp that must be drained?
Again, let us know when you make up your mind.
Trump, because of his unorthodox background and the nation’s polarization, was destined to make rookie mistakes that would be used to undermine him. But the failure to repeal ObamaCare, combined with his approval ratings sinking below 40 percent, show that he’s suddenly on thin ice with a big majority of voters. As his power slips, even Republicans will be hard to corral.
If the president has solutions up his sleeve, now is the time to reveal them.