Failure to repeal health law weakens Trump

Collapse of Republican vote shows a combination of political naivete and legislative incompetence

he Trump administration’s dramatic failure to repeal Obamacare leaves US President Donald Trump looking dangerously incompetent. He was voted in on his promise of being able to do deals, and many voters who distrusted his bombast and showmanship assumed that his experience in business would make him an effective president. They have been proved wrong.

The failure is all the more shocking to America’s right wing because immediately after Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, the Republican party has been obsessed with what they see as its evil consequences.

The extreme right wing of the Republicans’ anti-government movement and its conservative funders have a visceral hatred of what they call big government, and they made ending the Affordable Care Act a lynchpin of their movement. Trump won their support with his slogan “repeal and replace” but his lack of experience in government has been brutally revealed.

Trump failed on two important fronts. Firstly, he failed to offer anything as a cost-cutting alternative, which meant that the administration was asking the House and Senate to vote for ending Obamacare and instituting a policy vacuum. This is in stark contrast to Britain in the 1950s when the Conservatives decided not to undo the National Health Service, but to work with it. The Republicans have made no effort whatever to create a similar historic compromise with Obamacare, and have suffered the consequences.

But secondly and more damagingly, Trump failed to control the House where the Republicans have a majority. His own party rejected him. This will have a huge impact on American politics because Trump has staked his presidency on what he called his exceptional ability to do deals — “my art form”.

The failure means that any future legislation may also hit similar problems. The vast majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives were not in office when Obama was first elected, and they have no experience of working as part of a government to implement legislation.

For years they have talked up a storm of Tea Party extremism but they are now being called upon to deliver, and finding it very hard. And this has important foreign policy implications, because if this is the start of a lame-duck presidency (which is not yet the case), many international leaders will simply step aside and wait for Trump to implode rather than getting involved with any US proposals.