Their Mission: Trumpus Interruptus
Less than two months into his presidency, it is truly a wonder that President Trump has been able to accomplish much of anything- that is, given all of the forces set against him. With a mainstream media which seeks to cast none but aspersions onto his presidency, unified Democrats who have sworn to oppose him in each and every possible way, federal government employees, unaccepting of his election, who leak anything and everything to make him look bad, the NeverTrump Republicans who are desperately seeking anything they can find, to justify their anti-Trump behavior during the campaign, his is a presidency holding firm against a tsunami of opposition. The demise of Donald Trump’s presidency seems to be an almost universal sentiment, if not an all-encompassing goal.
The Democrats and their complicit allies in the mainstream media will lie, distort and demagogue without restraint to short-circuit the president, even if it means that President Trump will enter his third month still shy of a full cabinet. Despite the fact that candidate Trump could have been, and most likely was, subject to surveillance on his predecessor’s orders without warrant (as the president is able to do under law), nothing has surfaced which would lay credence to the myth of Trump/Russian collusion. Yet, this will be the oft-stated mantra of the Media/Democrat alliance for the remainder of his presidency. The Democrats, as well as their allies in the mainstream media know better, but this won’t stop them from drumming out the lie, regardless. Should the Russia card fail to confuse the public, the racism, sexism and xenophobe cards all await play in the hands of Democrats- all because Donald Trump had the nerve to win the election over Hillary Clinton. So what if the country is splitting apart, based on these lies? Being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.
Their mission: Trumpus Interruptus.
Despite all of that, he has accomplished quite a lot nevertheless. Through executive orders which he has signed- and only one has been stopped by lawyers opposed to his presidency- he has checked off many, if not most, of the promises he made to the American people during his campaign. The early indicators are that business has responded favorably to these initiatives, and a new national optimism is emerging in the wake of his presidency. Whatever his enemies (and they are legion) have to say against him, the American people are beginning to witness a growing surge in support for what he in fact is accomplishing.
In his first attempt to pursue legislative action, he has taken on the most difficult task first- the repeal and replacement of ObamaCare.
No domestic issue is more fraught with political peril, nor complicated to its core, nor nuanced with an effective double-edged sword than dealing with the national disaster that is health insurance, today. Whatsoever was wrong with health insurance prior to Barack Obama’s presidency was hardly worth the effort to fix it by bringing down the entire health insurance market for everyone else. To leave the ACA as is, and thereby let it fail, places its ultimate failure exclusively on the Democrats, which would be the strategically cynical and partisan thing for Republicans to do. Republicans who, by and large, would rather fall on their own swords in pursuit of what they deem to be is right, have thus taken on the burden of fixing a system which Democrats engineered to eventually fail, in order to bring about nationalized and socialized health insurance for all. Leave it to the House Republicans to break this purported effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare into three steps, which well could be accomplished in one, if only Senate Republicans would do away with the decades-old Robert Byrd (D-WV) rule which sets a standard of approval at a filibuster-proof threshold. Nothing in the Constitution requires this- only a rule which the Senate is empowered to change, at will. With a little spine, Republicans could get everything they want, including a thorough divorce from health insurance by the federal government, medical malpractice liability reform and the severing of state boundaries to the health insurance market, and send all of the regulating power back to the states where it belongs, pursuant to the Tenth Amendment.
But will they?
While Democrats sit back and laugh at the clumsiness of their Republican colleagues, President Trump has been put into a position to show support for the Republicans’ American Health Care Act, on the sheer basis that it is better than ObamaCare- that is a pretty low bar, by any standard. It’s no wonder that his administration is reticent to place their name on something that may not pass, in the end, due to a unified Democrat minority and a fractured Republican majority, in both houses of Congress.
The sad fact of the matter is that Democrats don’t know how to behave themselves when they lose, and Republicans don’t know how to function when they win. In their mutual intransigence, the nation hangs in balance.
Sadly, for President Donald J. Trump, so may his presidency.
-Drew Nickell, 15 March 2017
© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Bending-Your-Ear-Collection-Essays/dp/1633932907?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc
Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2