Having Co-Opted the Tea Party Nationwide, Trump Tries to Stamp out its Remnants in Congress

[Origanalist]

Having Co-Opted the Tea Party Nationwide, Trump Tries to Stamp out its Remnants in Congress

The ultimate outsider candidate collaborates with the GOP establishment to marginalize the House Freedom Caucus and pivot toward centrist Democrats

Matt Welch|Mar. 27, 2017

This assessment of the famously stubborn, 29-member group is shared by an uncounted number of the their colleagues, and even one of their own: Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), who resigned from the caucus yesterday, explaining that, "Saying no is easy, leading is hard, but that is what we were elected to do." Also in the screw-you-guys,-I'm-going-home camp is Rep. Austin Scott (R-Georgia):

As the debacle was taking shape Friday, you saw a lot of such with-us-or-against-us talk:

And it wasn't just on talk-radio Twitter. The Wall Street Journal, in a withering post-debacle editorial, asserted that the Freedom Caucus "sabotaged"…its "best chance to reform government":

[T]he result of their rule-or-ruin strategy will now be the ObamaCare status quo, and Mark Meadows (North Carolina), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Louie Gohmert (Texas) and the rest own all of its problems. Please spare everyone your future grievances about rising health spending or an ever-larger government.

The grand prize for cynicism goes to Senator Rand Paul, who campaigned against the bill while offering an alternative that hasn't a prayer of passing.

Now, there are plenty of contrary takes (see Conn Carroll, Justin Amash, and Reihan Salam, for starters). But the betting money is that both the Trump administration and the GOP establishment it now sits atop will seek actively to marginalize the rebels and instead find common governing cause with centrist Democrats, particularly in the United States Senate. If true, this scenario would produce one of the greatest cognitive dissonances in modern political history, while setting the administration up for even more humiliation during its honeymoon phase. Trump the above-the-fray outsider is collaborating with dealmaking career insiders to sideline one of the only principled Beltway blocs, even before showing any ability to woo Democrats over to Trump's anti-conservative agenda. It's all shaping up to be a godawful mess.

In a terrific New York Times Magazine article over the weekend, Robert Draper captured the quick devolution of Planet Trump's attitudes toward the House Freedom Caucus, and by extrapolation its Senate allies such as Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz:

Early this year, [House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy predicted to me that the new president would quickly subjugate the Freedom Caucus. "Trump is strong in their districts," McCarthy told me. "There's not a place for them to survive in this world."

When we spoke on the morning of March 7, Trump assured me that he would not bully the Obamacare-replacement bill's loudest Republican critics, like the Freedom Caucus chairman, Representative Mark Meadows, on Twitter: "No, I don't think I'll have to," he said. "Mark Meadows is a great guy and a friend of mine. I don't think he'd ever disappoint me, or the party. I think he's great. No, I would never call him out on Twitter. Some of the others, too. I don't think we'll need to…."

But on March 21, in a meeting with the Freedom Caucus about the bill, Trump called out Meadows by name, saying, "I'm going to come after you, but I know I won't have to, because I know you'll vote 'yes.' " Meadows remained a "no"

The Draper piece makes clear that many of Trump's post-Ryancare priorities will involve such deviations from modern conservative orthodoxy as raising tariffs, spending billions on infrastructure, and abandoning even the rhetorical pretense of taking on the fiscal unsustainability of old-age entitlements.

When I spoke with Trump, I ventured that, based on available evidence, it seemed as though conservatives probably shouldn't hold their breath for the next four years expecting entitlement reform. Trump's reply was immediate. "I think you're right," he said. In fact, Trump seemed much less animated by the subject of budget cuts than the subject of spending increases. "We're also going to prime the pump," he said. "You know what I mean by 'prime the pump'? In order to get this" — the economy — "going, and going big league, and having the jobs coming in and the taxes that will be cut very substantially and the regulations that'll be going, we're going to have to prime the pump to some extent. In other words: Spend money to make a lot more money in the future. And that'll happen." A clearer elucidation of Keynesian liberalism could not have been delivered by Obama. continued...

http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/27/ha...rty-nationwide

[Superfluous Man]

Hugh Hewitt's confused. Pelosi actually voted against Trump's keep Obamacare bill.

[CPUd]

This is all just part of the plot to get rid of Paul Ryan

[Brian4Liberty]

And as I said in another thread, here it is, the neocons going after the Freedom Caucus. Occasional ally Reason quotes notorious neocon Hugh Hewlitt and Neocon Street Journal.

[eleganz]

So many attempts to make it seem like Trump wants revenge on HFC, none of the quotes are good enough to make the case though.

[Superfluous Man]

So many attempts to make it seem like Trump wants revenge on HFC, none of the quotes are good enough to make the case though.

To make what case?

Trump's entire mission as president is to do the exact opposite of everything the HFC stands for. And we didn't need the snafu of Trumpcare to figure that out.