President becomes ensnared in fiery GOP civil war
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ignites a lot of fights, but the biggest defeat in his short time in the White House was the result of a long-running Republican civil war that had already humbled a generation of party leaders before him.
A precedent-flouting president who believes that Washington’s usual rules and consequences of politics do not apply to him, Mr. Trump now finds himself shackled by them.
In stopping the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Republican Party’s professed priority for the last seven years, the rebellious far right wing of his party out-rebelled Mr. Trump, and won a major victory Friday over the party establishment that he now leads.
Like every other Republican leader who has tried to rule a fissured and fractious party, Mr. Trump faces a wrenching choice: retrenchment or realignment. Does he cede power to the anti-establishment wing of his party? Or does he seek other pathways to successful governing by throwing away the partisan playbook and courting a coalition with the Democrats he has improbably blamed for his party’s shortcomings?
“It’s really a problem in our own party, and that’s something he’ll need to deal with moving forward,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who is an ally of the centerright Tuesday Group, which stuck with Mr. Trump in the health care fight and earned the president’s praise in the hours after the bill’s defeat.
“I think he did a lot — he met with dozens and dozens of members and made a lot of accommodations — but in the end there’s a group of people in this party who just won’t say ‘yes,’ ” Mr. Cole said. “At some point I think that means looking beyond our conference.”
Mr. Trump is not there yet. So far he is operating from the standard-issue Republican playbook. He seems determined to swallow the loss in hopes of marshaling enough Republican support to pass spending bills, an as-yet unformed tax overhaul and a $1 trillion infrastructure package.
On Friday evening, a somewhat shellshocked president asked his advisers repeatedly: Whose fault was this?
Increasingly, that blame has fallen on Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, who coordinated the initial legislative strategy on the health care repeal with Speaker Paul Ryan, his close friend and a fellow Wisconsin native, according to three people briefed on Mr. Trump’s recent discussions.
Mr. Trump, an image-obsessed developer, made a game effort of negotiating with members of the farright Freedom Caucus, even if it seemed to some members that he did not have the greatest grasp of health care policy or legislative procedure.
He told one adviser that his loss was a minor bump in the road.
In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Trump insisted that the administration was “rocking.” The problem, he suggested, was divisions among Republicans.
But Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, according to people familiar with White House discussions, described what happened as a flat-out failure that could inflict serious damage on this presidency — even if Mr. Bannon believes Congress, not Mr. Trump, deserves much of the blame.
Mr. Bannon and legislative affairs director Marc Short pushed Mr. Trump to insist on a public vote, as a way to identify and pressure “no” voters.
One Hill Republican aide said Mr. Bannon and Mr. Short were seeking to compile an enemies list. But Mr. Ryan repeatedly counseled the president to avoid or at least postpone seeking vengeance.
Mr. Trump decided to back down. But the president’s advisers worry about the hard reality going forward — the developer with the tough-guy veneer was steamrollered by various factions in the Republican Congress.
The administration lamented outsourcing much of the early bill drafting to Mr. Ryan.
Despite the president’s public displays of unity with the speaker, Mr. Trump’s team was privately stunned by Mr. Ryan’s inability to master the politics of his own conference, according to two West Wing aides. The president, they said, is still sizing up Mr. Ryan’s abilities.
At the same time, Mr. Trump on Saturday took to Twitter to urge his followers to tune into Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, “Justice With Judge Jeanine.” During that broadcast, Ms. Pirro called on Mr. Ryan to step down for failing to pass the high-profile health-care bill.
Earlier, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Mr. Trump’s tweet was motivated only by his being a fan of Ms. Pirro’s show.