There is no way to spin to those who were promised that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed and replaced once Republicans held full power in Washington that what has happened is the fault of forces outside the party. This has been a GOP undertaking from start to finish. It is as though Republicans unknowingly set a trap and then walked into it without having prepared escape routes.
Instead, those tweets underscored the futility of trying to make what happened on health care anything other than what it was: a self-inflicted wound by a party that succumbed to easy appeal of campaign slogans without doing the hard work of policymaking over the past seven years.
William Galston of the Brookings Institution noted Tuesday that the health-care debate showed anew that Republicans have not bridged the gap between campaigning and governing. This has been a longtime problem for a party that is at best ambivalent about the federal government and at worst openly anti-government, at least rhetorically.
“The Republican Party is grappling with the fact that conservative orthodoxy is one thing and populism is another,” Galston said. “Populists are not anti-government. Populists are in favor of government that helps people like them.”
Republican lawmakers will take all that in and recognize, as they already know, that the president will claim any victories they produce for him and run from any defeats, but he is not likely to be the architect of a policy that will match his campaign rhetoric.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...e-415pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.ea4842c10b59
Instead, those tweets underscored the futility of trying to make what happened on health care anything other than what it was: a self-inflicted wound by a party that succumbed to easy appeal of campaign slogans without doing the hard work of policymaking over the past seven years.
William Galston of the Brookings Institution noted Tuesday that the health-care debate showed anew that Republicans have not bridged the gap between campaigning and governing. This has been a longtime problem for a party that is at best ambivalent about the federal government and at worst openly anti-government, at least rhetorically.
“The Republican Party is grappling with the fact that conservative orthodoxy is one thing and populism is another,” Galston said. “Populists are not anti-government. Populists are in favor of government that helps people like them.”
Republican lawmakers will take all that in and recognize, as they already know, that the president will claim any victories they produce for him and run from any defeats, but he is not likely to be the architect of a policy that will match his campaign rhetoric.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...e-415pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.ea4842c10b59
