GOP fluffs chance to make good on promise

All the commentary in the wake of the monumental failure of the president and his Republican congressional colleagues on health care overhaul has produced many fascinating observations.

Two of them stand out to me.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Friday that “doing big things is hard.” No kidding, Mr. Speaker. He then added that Republicans have been the opposition party for so long that they’ve forgotten how to govern.

Donald Trump and Ryan failed to get enough conservative Republican House members to sign on to a health care plan they said would replace the Affordable Care Act. Rather than suffer the greater embarrassment of having their new health care plan fail in a floor vote, Ryan pulled the measure. Done! No vote!

Then he went about trying to explain how the GOP needs to know how to actually govern rather than be a political party that gripes continually about a president from the other party.

Which brings me to another point I’ve heard.

It came from Jeffrey Lord, a CNN contributor and a strong supporter of Trump and his agenda.

Lord said today that congressional Republicans had nearly eight years to come up with a plan to replace the ACA. Eight years!

Instead, they focused on repealing a plan they detested. They had no plan to replace the ACA.

Lord noted that on Inauguration Day, GOP leaders should have been standing on the steps of the Capitol Building waiting for the new president with a draft replacement plan in hand. After all, Lord said, they had all that time to come up with something. They could have hammered all their differences out with various party caucuses within the GOP: TEA Party, Freedom Caucus, more moderate elements.

They squandered their opportunity to deliver on that promise they made during the 2016 election campaign, which was to deliver an ACA replacement plan to the president on “Day One.”

What’s the message? Quit your yapping!