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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 6:36 am 
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If they push hard to get it through, but fail on one step or an other, they can later claim "We had the perfect plan, that would have lead to milk and honey for everyone, but thoose assholes shot it down out of spite."

From a Machiavellian point of view that might be the best position you can have on US health care policy. Show commitment because it is important to many people, but have someone else be responsible for the results, because whatever your solution is, someone important will be disapointed.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 12:41 pm 
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The Republicans can't blame the Democrats for this one, because they are having problems getting enough Republicans to vote for it. The Democrats have just got to stand there twiddling their thumbs.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 12:49 pm 
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Kea wrote:
1. I'm not sure why they're going to so much effort to squeeze it through the House when it's even less popular in the Senate. Do they think that they can use the mere fact of passing the House to strongarm the Senate into letting it through?
2. Numerically, are there more far-right Congresscritters than moderates? Otherwise, why try to appease the unappeaseable? That's their thing.
3. The irony is that Paul Ryan won't give the far right what it wants - allowing insurers to offer cheap crappy insurance plans - for fear that the poor might use their cheap crappy subsidies to purchase them. Because then the government would have to give out money.

The House is today, the Senate is later. Besides, it wouldn't be Trump's or Ryan's massive political problem if it dies in or en route to the Senate. The members of the House rank and file would have to answer for their vote without a success to show for it, thus the protracted song and dance (it might or might not be voted on today, but the head of the Appropriations committee just came out opposed so might not seems to be ahead on points).

As for the ultra-reactionary Congresscritters; they may not outnumber the slightly less reactionary ones, but they are organized into a bloc and there are more of them than the Republican majority in the House. So on a bill like this, where Democratic fellow travelers can be counted on to vote no, you either appease or fail. That the only other alternative might be appease and fail is a different problem. On that note, the Koch brothers are offering to subsidize all the Republicans who vote 'no' (payment via campaign ads); so the slightly less reactionary would find bucking the leadership on this rapidly worsening vote loser of a bill much easier than they normally would.

To me the irony is that Ryan couldn't care less about health insurance. To him this is just another of his massive tax cuts for the rich taken out of the hides of the poor and working classes that will facilitate further tax cuts for the rich later on (it's a budget rule thing).

Arcosh, the Republicans have been promising various parts of their base to kill the ACA since the day it was passed. Now that they own Washington there is little real chance that they can fail to kill it, or kill and replace it, and then successfully sucker many voters into blaming someone else (especially not the rich ones). And it has to be someone else; passing blame to other Republicans triggers an intraparty battle which interferes with passing anything else. So of course Trump is already trying to make sure that Ryan gets the blame, never mind that he needs him to get anything done of his own legislative agenda. Remember, there is no 'I' in 'team', but there's apparently a lot of ground meat.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:55 pm 
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Weremensh wrote:
Arcosh, the Republicans have been promising various parts of their base to kill the ACA since the day it was passed. Now that they own Washington there is little real chance that they can fail to kill it, or kill and replace it, and then successfully sucker many voters into blaming someone else (especially not the rich ones). And it has to be someone else; passing blame to other Republicans triggers an intraparty battle which interferes with passing anything else. So of course Trump is already trying to make sure that Ryan gets the blame, never mind that he needs him to get anything done of his own legislative agenda. Remember, there is no 'I' in 'team', but there's apparently a lot of ground meat.
"We tried our best, but those traitors who call themselves Republicans sabotaged our great plan! Vote them out in 2018!" And the moderates will face far wing challenges to their incumbency and the scale will slide further right, in their perfect plan. What will really happen is that the entire Republican establishment will be unable to get anything done, even with majorities in congress, the presidency, and a 4-4 Judicial, and they'll get the poop kicked out of them in 2018.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:12 pm 
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If Ryan knew all along that the Senate wasn't going to buy it, there was no point in going through the trouble of designing this ugly kludge of compromise legislation. He could've just gotten the House to vote on another "Booyah! Obamacare Sux!" bill like the 60-odd ones they've already passed, declared victory, and let it go get equally dead in the Senate where it would be equally not his problem. He must've thought his giant tax cuts had a chance of becoming law when he started out, and then got too embarrassed to back down.

If Trump had listened to the advisers who were telling him to trash it, Ryan might've been relieved to go back to the drawing board. But because Trump can't tell the difference between a policy and TV guide, he made it all about his ego, and I suppose the Republican leadership had no choice but to forge ahead.

Ryan's going to have to pull a magic rabbit out of his arse in the next 24 hours.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:45 pm 
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I think the idea might have been that first something is forced through the House, then the Senate gets pushed into passing something else, the conference committee gives Ryan the tax cuts he wants, and finally both houses are strong-armed into passing it. Trump would have to be used, and would claim all the credit if it worked, but who cares? The rich and powerful would know who really got them their tax cuts, the rest is besides the point.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 5:15 pm 
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Untrustworthy source, I know; but Trump announced that the AHCA bill was pulled. Ryan called a conference instead of a vote, so it looks like it might be true.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 9:26 am 
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There's talk that General Flynn is cooperating with the FBI against Trump. It's certainly plausible (especially to those of us who remember Watergate), and it could make things interesting if true.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:39 am 
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Huh. If that's the case, they must've offered Flynn a massive plea deal.

So, Trump's subtly (by his standards) trying to blame Ryan for the health care bill's failure. Word has it that Bannon tried to persuade Trump to compile an enemies list of disloyal Republicans who refused to support it. What, besides prancing around like a cartoon villain, does Bannon think he's going to do with such a list? Sabotage their reelection campaigns in 2018, thereby handing seats to the Democrats? The man seems to think he lives in a Bond movie.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 2:42 pm 
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The i guess they can exclude Republicans from the list, when there are positions to fill.

And they can attempt to run their own candidates in primaries against them.

BTW the "you need to have priorities, iPhone or health insurence" line i heard somewhere gave an idea for an attack ad, the democrats could run:

Voiceover (modelled after old horror movie voice overs): "They say they are after your cell phones...."

To that show some i guess preferable blue collar looking 50ish white male, standing on a street corner texting, and a lawery looking guy in a suit comes along an in passing takes away the phone.

Voiceover: ".. but really they are after your health care."

Show the same guy in a hospital bed with a doctor and a nurse attending him and more lawerly guys come in and drag the doctor, the nurse and the drip away.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 4:06 pm 
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Kea wrote:
What, besides prancing around like a cartoon villain, does Bannon think he's going to do with such a list? Sabotage their reelection campaigns in 2018, thereby handing seats to the Democrats? The man seems to think he lives in a Bond movie.


Replace them with pro-Trump hardliners, perhaps?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:00 pm 
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Considering that this health care bill only received 17% public support, "this Congressperson wouldn't vote for it" may not play in primaries the way Bannon thinks it will. He must be assuming that in 2 years' time, Trump voters will have forgotten what the health care bill was about and will vote against whoever Trump says to vote against. P. T. Barnum did say that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public...

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 4:49 am 
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Given it did not pass, they now have plenty of time to tell how great it would have been, and there will be no tangible evidence against that. See my earlier comment, how the best thing that can happen to you in US healthcare is, that you fail.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 5:10 am 
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Considering everything else they've done, they might try to pull off such an act of collective amnesia. If bashing Obamacare required pretending that they never had anything to do with its predecessor, Romneycare, then perhaps in 2 years they'll all be pretending that Ryancare was a piece of misunderstood genius instead of a shoddy piece of legislative garbage hated by left, right, and centre.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:17 pm 
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That's going to oblige them not to overtly and massively screw up and/or betray the idiots in the cheap seats any more. So long as they keep doing it nobody is going to forget the first time it happened. Given that we're looking at a likely government shutdown in then next few weeks over Planned Parenthood, on top of an almost doomed attempt to more overtly rig the tax code, that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.

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