I’m a loser
And I lost someone who’s dear to me
I’m a loser
And I’m not what I appear to be.
Lennon/McCartney
Imagine that you are Donny Rotten today (I hear you retching in the background). You sold yourself to the American public, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary, as a brilliant businessman and negotiator who could break through the gridlock in Washington and get things done. You then associated yourself way too closely with a health care plan devised by Paul Ryan that would have hurt your supporters if it had been approved. You couldn’t close the deal, and now you have been exposed as a bumbler and a failure: a man on golf cart, not a man on horseback. There’s nothing you hate more than that. Your Twitter fingers are itching to go turbo.
What do you take away from this mess? Here is my guess:
- You simply can’t rely on Ryan to deliver the votes, so don’t lend your name to any of his initiatives unless they have a lot more support than AHCA did.
- Forget about the cuts to Social Security and Medicare that he wants. They will be an even bigger fiasco than AHCA.
- Forget about tax reform, which requires balancing and trade-offs that are beyond the capacity of the GOP, and stick to tax cuts, which are universally popular within the party.
- Part of the problem is that you have minimal leverage with Congress because your popularity is down in the dumps. There’s nothing like victory in a war against a cartoonish opponent to bring up your poll numbers. Look out, North Korea!