Trump Needs a New Speaker -- Paul Ryan Cannot Be Trusted

Last Friday evening, the Republican anti-Trump Neo-Conservatives dealt a death blow to any meaningful healthcare reform. • • • THE FACTS. Republicans scrapped a vote on the healthcare bill at President Trump’s request Friday because a growing number of Republicans declared they opposed the latest version just a day after the President demanded a do-or-die vote on the longtime GOP priority. House Speaker Paul Ryan called off the vote after Trump asked him to in a phone conversation shortly before the vote was set to be held, according to a senior leadership aide. Trump and Ryan have repeatedly called Obamacare a "disaster" that is collapsing under its own weight. But in 2015, the proportion of the US population without insurance fell to a record low -- about 10.5% of Americans younger than 65, down from 18.2% in 2010. That is the classic example of an 'entitlement' that, once granted, cannot be removed except through the sternest of disciplined political will. What the GOP bill proposed was to pull hundreds of billions of dollars out of the health system by winding down Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid and limiting its subsidies, thereby threatening revenue for hospitals, doctors and insurance companies. But Neo-Conservatives were not satisfied with that and called for a more complete repeal, while moderates were taken aback when the Congressional Budget Office said the GOP plan would leave 24 million fewer Americans with health insurance by 2026. Neo-Conservatives and moderates said they would vote against the bill, including House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen. • During Obama’s administration, the Republican-controlled House voted more than 50 times to repeal or curtail Obamacare. One repeal measure made it to Obama’s desk, and he vetoed it. Ryan boasted during last year’s campaign that the GOP had a clear consensus on how to finally repeal and replace the health law under a Republican President. But, finally, only Trump and his supporters, not the GOP House, had the stomach for removing the entitlement in its present collapsing form and replacing it with practical healthcare in a three-step process that Trump often said would leave nobody without healthcare. • • • THE AFTERMATH. President Trump's chief of staff Reince Priebus told Fox News Sunday : “At the end of the day, it’s time for the party to start governing. I also think though, that Democrats can come to the table as well.” • Progressive Democrats and their mainstream media lapdogs called the outcome an embarrassment that casts doubt on Trump and Ryan’s ability to deliver on their ambitious agenda, including taxes and infrastructure, both of which are being closely watched by Wall Street. • The collapse of healthcare reform hung on 20 votes -- Ryan canceled the vote on the bill when he realized he was 20 votes shy of the minimum 216, and faced strong opposition from the roughly 35-member, conservative House Freedom Caucus. On Saturday, Trump hinted that overhauling Obamacare is still alive, perhaps through bringing Democrats into the process because of widespread bipartisan concern about the 2010 health care law’s increasing costs and fewer insurance policy options for Americans. Trump tweeted : “Obamacare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great health care plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!” Representative Tim Ryan, the Ohio Democrat who challenged Nancy Pelosi for the House minority leadership earlier this year and got 63 votes, a record against Pelosi, seemed open to such discussions, acknowledging later on Saturday that Obamacare indeed has problems, including too few tax credits for poor Americans to help them pay for the insurance, stating on Fox News : “Obamacare is not perfect. We need to fix things. This is all fixable if we sit down as reasonable people.” • Priebus also told “Fox News Sunday” that Trump was “100 percent correct” in a tweet earlier in the morning in which the President blamed the Freedom Caucus along with Washington conservative groups Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation for nixing the overhaul bill, crafted by Ryan and his leadership team. Priebus said : “We can't be chasing the perfect all the time. Sometimes you have to take good and put it in your pocket and take the win....I think it's time for our folks to come together. And I also think it's [time] to potentially get a few moderate Democrats on board.” • • • PAUL RYAN'S FAILURE AS SPEAKER. Trump said afterward : "We have no Democratic support. We have no votes from them. They weren’t going to give us a single vote.” • We can forgive President Trump for expecting that the House healthcare debate and vote would be 'reasonable.' It was his first congressional effort. And, he is a businessman who lives by 'reasonable' negotiations. • But Speaker Paul Ryan is a creature of the House. He knows its cliques, whose bitter fights and animosity against those who disagree with them are the stuff of "Shootout at OK Corral." There was never, NEVER, going to be one Democrat vote for the Ryan-Trump healthcare bill. The rumors in Washington suggest that Trump knew this instinctively and wanted to go for tax reform before healthcare, but Ryan persuaded him to reverse the order and get healthcare done first. If that is true, and it probably is, we see one more piece of evidence that Trump's instincts are better than the best Washington insider advice he can get. • Ryan told reporters : “We came really close today, but we came up short. I will not sugarcoat this : This is a disappointing day for us. But it is not the end of the story.” Ryan said he believes the GOP will need some time to regroup. • Many in the House GOP caucus disagree with their "leader." Republican Greg Walden of Oregon, the former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee said : “This bill is dead.” Representative Joe Barton, a senior member on the Energy and Commerce Committee; said : "I don’t think the bill in its current form will come up again." Andy Barr, a Kentucky Republican, said : “I think that this is a learning lesson and we’ve made this shift from an opposition party to a governing party and I hope that we do learn from this experience and that we are able to not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Because this is not a game.” • But, it was Ryan who stated the obvious : “Obamacare is the law of the land. it’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced. We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” • • • IS IT TIME TO REPLACE RYAN AS SPEAKER? Representative Steve Womack said Republicans need to get back to basics and have an "introspective conversation" about what it means to govern : "We have moderates and we have ultra conservative people in the conference. We have to reeducate ourselves in mathematics and basic arithmetic. We have to learn that we’re not just the party of no. We have to learn how to govern." He called it "a loss for leadership." • The leader who lost the day for Republican healthcare reform was Speaker Paul Ryan. And, it was not just the monumental misscall of Speaker Ryan, who should never have brought the healthcare bill to the floor until he had an ironclad majority of his GOP caucus behind it. Ryan allowed Trump to waste precious presidential "cards" by agreeing to his wading onto the legislative battlefield to fight for the bill. Trump met with scores of lawmakers and traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to address the full House Republican conference. The President "left everything on the field," according to spokesman Sean Spicer. • WHY did Vice President Mike Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and senior advisor Kellyanne Conway -- all of whom are infinitely more seasoned in congressional infighting than Trump -- turn Trump loose to waste his cachet like that??? Where was the White House private vote count -- there certainly was one. Why did it not raise the red flag early on, telling Trump's senior staff it was time to fold. • But, at the end of the day, it is Speaker Ryan who is to blame for a leadership gaff that he alone could have prevented. Jeanine Pirro -- Judge Jeanine on Fox News -- got it absolutely right : "I never put my faith in you, [Speaker] Ryan. I questioned you all through the campaign when you distanced yourself from candidate Trump whenever you felt the prevailing winds blowing against Trump. To me, your loyalty was always in question. Yet what was never in question, to me, was your intelligence, your savvy, and your comprehension of the system. So why? Why would you let this happen? What was your agenda? The reason, Speaker Ryan, that you, and all your Washington colleagues, are held in such low esteem is because you have forgotten about us. In spite of the fact that you RINOS were all working against him though, the President joined with you and relied on you. Trusting you. Believing you had his back. You didn't. The American people won't forget this and neither should the President." • • • DEAR READERS, yes, it is time for Speaker Ryan to go. Either he is not tough enough for the job, or he 'jobbed' his President. In either case, Trump has too many vital items on his agenda to have to worry about a weak-kneed or, worse yet, a subversive Speaker who will choose when to support him and when to let him twist in the wind. • The Neo-Conservatives are the real Republicans in Name Only. Jim DeMint left the Senate to take over the Heritage Foundation, expecting it to be his launching pad to the presidency. He did not reckon with the rise and election of Donald Trump. • If Heritage, which used to be a truly great conservative foundation whose publications meant something, does not dump DeMint and get back to its original gameplan, it too will face the wrath of Republicans who support Trump and are now aware that they are paying for DeMint's treachery. • And, President Trump needs to take a long, hard look at his senior advisor group. Perhaps he needs them all -- but he also needs someone who will give him straight, tough advice about Washington and congressional politics. I thought VP Pence would fill that role, but where was Mike Pence last week when his advice could have saved Trump from the public embarassment caused by Speaker Ryan?? • Perhaps there is an answer to that question. Did Pence and Trump -- when they realized the healthcare bill was DOA -- decide to let Ryan fall by reason of his own weakness or trickery? • On Sunday, Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican, resigned from the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Poe intended to vote in favor of the bill and personally told President Trump last week that he would support the measure. Poe said : “To deliver on the conservative agenda we have promised the American people for eight years, we must come together to find solutions to move this country forward. Saying no is easy, leading is hard, but that is what we were elected to do. Leaving this caucus will allow me to be a more effective member of Congress and advocate for the people of Texas. It is time to lead." • In the days before the planned vote, Trump suggested those who wouldn’t support the overhaul bill could lose in their 2018 re-election primaries. And in a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting last week, the President reportedly made clear to Freedom Caucus leader Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, that he would hold the congressman responsible if the bill failed. Trump and Ryan talked Saturday and Sunday. Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said they spoke Saturday for roughly an hour about “moving forward on (their) agenda” and that their relationship is “stronger than ever right now.” Strong also told Fox News that Trump made clear Sunday that his tweet earlier in the day had nothing to do with the Speaker : “They are both eager to get back to work on the agenda." And apparently, it was Freedom Caucus vice chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio who forced a hold-together decision on the Caucus members -- making them agree not to decide individually to vote for the healthcare bill until the entire Caucus decided as a group. • On the outside chance -- and it seems to be more than that -- that Speaker Ryan and other Neo-Cons "set up" President Trump to take a fall on the healthcare legislation that got pulled last Friday, it is time for Trump to pull the plug on Ryan's Speakership. The true conservative agenda led by President Trump cannot afford unreliable House leadership or a Freedom Caucus that has forgotten why it exists. The draining of the swamp is not finished by a long shot. It's time for that famous Trump line. Ryan, DeMint, Meadows, Jim Jordan -- "You're fired."