A new strategy?

ARE THERE STILL TRUMP CARDS TO PLAY?

Then, too, I can recall in detail the story arc of Reagan’s first year in office, which is regarded nowadays as a triumph of presidential leadership and legislative accomplishment, but in fact was a much closer run thing that people recall. By the last week of March in 1981, Reagan’s tax cut and budget proposals were in deep trouble on Capitol Hill. Like the House last week, the Senate finance committee had voted it down, prompting a famous Wall Street Journal editorial attacking the Republican committee chair Sen. Pete Domenici as “John Maynard Domenici.” Democrats and the media were getting ready at the end of March to declare that Reagan’s “honeymoon” was over, and that his tax and budget-cutting agenda was dead.

Then Reagan got shot, which reset Reagan’s honeymoon and allowed his team to regroup on Capitol Hill, ultimately yielding congressional victories in June and August (also, incidentally, using the budget reconciliation process for the first time to achieve their broad policy goals). Even with Reagan’s high popularity after his shooting, it was still a hard-fought battle on Capitol Hill. Whoever thought a health care bill could get through the House in two weeks was not thinking very clearly.

 Not sure what to make of this, other than to question whether this suggests that without getting shot, that Reagan would not have passed his tax agenda, or that in order to regain momentum, Donald Trump should take a bullet and spend some times in the Hospital.

I think the larger point is that sometimes we forget that we are still only sixty six days into the new Trump Presidency. Considering the President's complete lack of any prior political governing experience, one might think that two months and a week, might be a little too quick of a learning curve for pretty much anyone.

Personally I feel the real moral of the story here is that Trump should follow Reagan's foot steps and move forward with new tax cuts, and put the health care issue on the back burner. If all of the various factions of the GOP House and Senate cannot agree on the need for tax changes, then Trump (and the GOP) has bigger problems than Obamacare.

Obamacare will continue to crumble, and eventually the demand to do something will be too big to ignore, even for the Freedom Caucus. Maybe even for the Democrats. When that time comes, Trump and the GOP can revisit the American Health Care Act, or whatever they are wanting to call it. But as Tom Cotton implied recently, to write something this big, this serious, and this important, and in secret; then expect it to pass in eighteen days, is a little high in the expectations department. It's going to take a lot more work, and not such a reliance on deal making and politicking.