Daily Archives

July 30, 2017

24 posts · Sunday

Donald Trump Can’t Close the Deal

July 30, 2017 at 9:58 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

National Review: “Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans — and America — went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is. Trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man. We did not elect Donald Trump; we elected the character he plays on television.”

“He has had a middling career in real estate and a poor one as a hotelier and casino operator but convinced people he is a titan of industry. He has never managed a large, complex corporate enterprise, but he did play an executive on a reality show. He presents himself as a confident ladies’ man but is so insecure that he invented an imaginary friend to lie to the New York press about his love life and is now married to a woman who is open and blasé about the fact that she married him for his money. He fixates on certain words (‘negotiator’) and certain classes of words (mainly adjectives and adverbs, ‘bigly,’ ‘major,’ ‘world-class,’ ‘top,’ and superlatives), but he isn’t much of a negotiator, manager, or leader. He cannot negotiate a health-care deal among members of a party desperate for one, can’t manage his own factionalized and leak-ridden White House, and cannot lead a political movement that aspires to anything greater than the service of his own pathetic vanity.”

What Three ‘No’ Votes Had In Common

July 30, 2017 at 9:36 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

This piece is only available to Political Wire members.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that the three Republican senators who torpedoed their party’s Obamacare repeal plan were Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain. Each of them is somewhat unique in the GOP caucus in that they don’t fear the Tea Party wing of their party.

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McCain Once Almost Switched Parties

July 30, 2017 at 7:31 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “In secret negotiations with then-Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, McCain plotted how he would depart the GOP. He was furious over the way the party establishment had treated him in the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination against the eventually victorious George W. Bush. And within weeks of Bush’s swearing-in as president in 2001, McCain told Daschle that he was looking for a way out of the GOP, probably by declaring himself an independent—a move that would have thrown control of the otherwise 50-50 Senate to the Democrats. The negotiations got far enough, Daschle later told me, that the two men discussed the logistics of the news conference at which McCain would make the announcement.”

Said Daschle: “We came very close.”

Ryan Claims Only the House Works

July 30, 2017 at 7:26 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Speaker Paul Ryan, “who spent weeks urging his members to hold their fire and give Senate Republicans some space to get a health care deal, didn’t hide his frustration at a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement on Friday. He effectively threw the Senate under the bus, telling his colleagues that the House of Representatives was the only arm of the government that was working,” CNN reports.

Yelled Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL): “Low bar, low bar!”

One House GOP member in the meeting summarized Ryan’s remarks as “essentially, we are the functioning chamber. We did our work. This one is on them.”

Majority Wants Congress to Move On from Health Care

July 30, 2017 at 7:15 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds a majority of Americans are ready to move on from healthcare reform at this point after the U.S. Senate’s effort to dismantle Obamacare failed .

“Nearly two-thirds of the country wants to either keep or modify the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, and a majority of Americans want Congress to turn its attention to other priorities.”

Inside the End of the Priebus Era

July 30, 2017 at 7:10 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “It was an ignominious close to an operatic six months during which Priebus was sidelined from the outset, first by chief strategist Steve Bannon, then by Trump’s children and finally by Anthony Scaramucci, whose arrival last week as communications director heralded the imminent end of Priebus’ tenure.”

“But finally it was the absence of progress on Trump’s legislative agenda—health care, taxes, infrastructure—that prompted the president, in consultation with his family, to finally tell people around him it was time ‘to try a different approach,’ said one senior administration official.”

Said this person: “It’s hard to overstate how much the family had to do with this.”