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Daily Archives
July 19, 2017
40 posts · Wednesday
RNC Insider Suggests Guadagno Is Being Punished
“An insider within the RNC’s top leadership — who declined to speak for attribution because such appointees serve at the pleasure of the president — said the New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno’s (R) dire national fundraising situation stems as much from her double digit lag in recent polls as her public criticism of both the president and the governor,” according to the Newark Star Ledger.
Said the RNC insider: “The president is unhappy with anyone who neglected him in his hour of need,” referring to Guadagno’s public disavowal of Donald Trump after a 2005 Access Hollywood video of Trump surfaced showing him making crude, sexually aggressive statements.
Quote of the Day
“If any state doesn’t want to share this information, one has to wonder: What are they worried about? There’s something. There always is.”
— President Trump, quoted by the Daily Mail, making a surprise appearance at a meeting of his “voter fraud” commission.
Trump Calls Lee to Revive Health Care Bill
“President Trump has reached out to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the conservative who helped deal what appeared to be a fatal blow to the Senate healthcare bill, as part of a last ditch effort to revive the legislation,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“Lee reiterated his position that he wanted to free the market from Obamacare’s regulations in an effort to drive down premiums and provide more choices. Trump, according to the spokesman, seemed receptive.”
David Nather: “This anecdote suggests that Trump will try to convince Republican senators to revive the broader Senate health care bill when they meet for lunch at the White House today. It suggests that Trump still hasn’t grasped the big reason why Senate Republicans are stuck: They want different things, and every time GOP leaders try something to please one wing of the party, it pushes away the other.”
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Third of Trump Voters Don’t Think Meeting Took Place
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that 32% of Americans who voted for President Trump said they don’t believe that Trump’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer last year — even though he admitted that he did.
Why Trump Can’t Convince Anyone on Health Care
Ezra Klein: “The core problem is Trump has no idea what he’s talking about on health care and never bothered to learn. ‘Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,’ he famously, and absurdly, said. His inability to navigate its complexities meant he couldn’t make persuasive arguments on behalf of the bills he supported, and he routinely made statements that undercut the legislative process and forced Republicans to defend the indefensible.”
“Because Trump doesn’t understand the legislation or the trade-offs it made, he can’t make persuasive arguments on its behalf in public or private, and so he mostly doesn’t try. Trump and his team are not frequent presences in the public debate trying to sell the legislation they’re so keen to sign. That’s one reason the various bills routinely polled around 20 percent — without Trump using the bully pulpit to argue on behalf of the legislation, critics, terrible Congressional Budget Office reports, and news of congressional infighting filled the void.”
“When Trump does weigh in, it’s often a disaster.”
Trump’s Electoral Coalition Isn’t a Governing Coalition
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Quote of the Day
“This is an impossible hand.”
— Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), quoted by Politico, on his party’s “fragile majority” and inability to pass legislation.
Why the GOP May Not Be Punished for Health Bill Failure
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Why Republicans Still Stick By Trump
Paul Waldman: “Most of us see politics as a grand contest between parties and nationally-known figures. Politicians who want to keep their jobs have to think much smaller. So imagine you’re a Republican member of Congress from Kansas or Idaho or Alabama. Trump won your district by 25 points, and you barely had to campaign against your token Democratic opponent. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh play from the speakers in every diner and gas station in your district. The folks you talk to back home may have some misgivings about one thing or another that the administration is doing, but they are united in their hatred of liberals, Democrats, and the mainstream national media.”
“That’s why the only real political danger you worry about is a primary challenge from the right. You know that while Trump’s approval ratings rarely break 40 percent, his approval among Republican voters is still around 85 percent… And the Republicans who vote in primaries tend to be even more conservative than Republican voters overall.”
“Some version of that story describes most Republicans in Congress.”
Republicans Think Trump Isn’t Smart Enough for Collusion
McKay Coppins: “When I floated this idea to Capitol Hill Republicans, they generally found it preposterous. They were willing to allow for the possibility that some Trump campaign officials might have inappropriately cooperated with Russians, but they said the president and his team were simply too incompetent to pull off a high-level House of Cards-style conspiracy. At worst, they seemed to believe Team Trump’s collusion amounted to a ‘conspiracy of dunces’ (as a recent Ross Douthat column termed it)—embarrassing and unseemly, sure, but certainly not so grave as to demand blowing up the entire GOP agenda to address it.”
Said one senior Senate aide: “I think most of us agree that if something did happen, it wasn’t anything malicious … it’s just chalked up to them not being very smart.”
Health Care Bill Enters Zombie Phase
Rick Klein: “The GOP health care proposals are now in their zombie phase, and the undead can be hard to kill off. Perhaps that’s why President Trump is responding to major setbacks by attacking just about everybody — Democrats, Republicans and even the people who depend on Obamacare for their health insurance — if he’s serious about letting insurance markets fail now. Where he’s not assigning blame, of course, is on himself: ‘I’m not going to own it,’ the president declared.”
“That – aside from being a stunning abdication of presidential responsibility, if he’s serious — means that the White House plan is that there is no plan. The president will lunch with all Republican senators today to try to change minds one last time. But in blaming basically everybody, Trump’s own actions have given those senators no real political wiggle room. Just because Trump doesn’t have a strategy, though, doesn’t mean Republicans in Congress can’t. A failed vote next week would free up lawmakers to go rogue, and even – gasp – talk to people on the other side of the aisle.”
Sam Baker: “It ain’t over until it’s over, and there’s still some chatter bouncing around Capitol Hill about last-minute shenanigans or a Hail Mary on the Senate floor. And President Trump is sure to put some serious pressure on the moderates this afternoon when all of the Republican senators lunch with him at the White House. But unless something dramatic changes, Washington appears to be about done with the repeal-and-replace phase of the debate over the Affordable Care Act.”
Trump’s Magic Mirror
The New York Times compares Fox & Friends to an interactive children’s show trying to keep a distractible audience’s attention.
“President Trump is the show’s subject, its programmer, its publicist and its virtual fourth host. The stars offer him flattery, encouragement and advice. When he tweets, his words and image appear on a giant video wall. It’s the illusion of children’s TV — that your favorite show is as aware of you as you are of it — except that for Mr. Trump, it’s real.”
House GOP Can’t Even Pass Its Spending Bill
“House GOP leaders are resorting to Plan B on their spending strategy after falling woefully short of the support needed to pass a massive government funding package without Democratic votes,” Politico reports.
“Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday night that the House will vote next week on a measure that includes just four of the 12 bills needed to fund the federal government. That decision comes after GOP leaders failed to get enough Republican support to pass the full dozen without the help of their minority-party counterparts.”
Bill Kristol: “July 2017 could be the month historians look back to as the moment the GOP lost any credible claim to be a plausible governing party.”
Democrats Hold Wide Lead in Generic Ballot
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Democrats lead Republicans in the generic congressional ballot by 14 points, 52% to 36%.
Christie Booed After Catching Foul Ball
New York Daily News: “Christie, sitting in the third row behind the first base line, was able to make the catch after Cardinals second baseman Paul DeJong fouled off a pitch during the top of the third inning… Unfortunately for Christie, whose approval rating is down to 15%, the majority of fans in attendance didn’t appear to be too impressed with his catch — or the fact he appeared to give the ball to a young kid nearby — booing the unpopular governor after it became clear he was the one who caught DeJong’s foul ball.”
Said the TV announcer: “Nice to see him get from the beach to the ballpark.”
Trump Son Not Very Happy
A source in the Trump family circle tells People: “Don Jr. can’t do any deals, because he’ll be overly scrutinized. He just goes to work every day and is miserable… You can’t bite the hand that feeds you, but he can’t wait for these four years to be over.”
