Tag Archives: Freedom Caucus

national news

Sex scandal grows at Ohio State … and in Congress

Jim Jordan isn’t your normal, run-of-the-mill back-bencher in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is an outspoken conservative, and is one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus.

He also now is finding himself possibly caught in a sex scandal of someone else’s making. The problem with Jordan’s role in it might be that he knew what was going on but remain quiet about it.

The Ohio State University wrestling program is beset with reports of men sexually abusing young men. They allegedly peered into the locker room and pleasured themselves while watching the athletes  shower or sitting in saunas. There are reports of sex acts as well.

Jordan’s role? He was an assistant wrestling coach who, according to at least five wrestlers, knew these events were happening but did nothing to stop them.

Jordan denies all of it. Donald J. Trump has called the accusers liars while defending his congressional ally.

But … the men’s stories are piling up. They are sounding as credible as, say, the women who accused former Alabama judge and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of assaulting them, or of the young men who accused former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky of terrible deeds.

This story has all the makings of a scandal that is turning into a monstrosity.

national news

GOP House caucus stampedes lame-duck speaker

It’s no secret that the U.S. House of Representatives Republican majority at times can turn into an unruly bunch.

The TEA party faction, along with the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus, drove former Speaker John Boehner batty enough to make him quit.

Boehner’s successor, Paul Ryan, is getting the same treatment. The House Freedom Caucus helped torpedo a new farm bill for reasons that hardly anything to do with farm policy.

Ryan is a lame duck. He isn’t seeking re-election to the House from Wisconsin. Indeed, his speakership has been no picnic from the get-go. He now is finding it difficult to keep his own partisan troops in line, let alone getting any help from Democratic House members who don’t much like or respect him to begin with.

The farm bill got entangled with immigration, according to The Hill:

The House bill became inextricably linked with immigration after the Freedom Caucus demanded a vote on the conservative measure as moderates neared the 206 signatures needed to force a vote on a separate immigration plan that falls well short of the proposal pushed for by the White House.

Despite leadership offering the group of conservative hardliners a vote on the immigration measure in June, the members refused to back the legislation.

House conservatives seemingly want to poison an important aid to farmers and ranchers with an issue that ought to stand on its own.

As for the speaker, he told the country he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to seek the job he now holds. I guess he meant it.

Speaker Ryan’s remaining time as the Man of the House appears headed for a rocky conclusion.

national news, political news

Trump at war … with conservatives in GOP!

Conservative Republicans should have known what they were getting when they stood firmly behind their party’s presidential nominee in 2016.

They were backing a guy who didn’t understand them, didn’t understand how to legislate, didn’t grasp the degree to which they would run through brick walls to get their way.

So, when Donald Trump hooked up with congressional GOP leaders — comprising a few moderates here and there along with some notable conservatives — on a cobbled-together health care overhaul, the Freedom Caucus bolted.

The caucus opposed the American Health Care Act. It spoke as one. The president couldn’t deliver.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the Affordable Care Act should be repealed. It does kind of make me chuckle, too, to see the president get his head handed to him by a group of zealots who want the ACA tossed into the crapper.

But now the president has all but declared war against the Freedom Caucus. I believe this open warfare might doom whatever passes for Trump’s legislative agenda for, oh, the foreseeable future.

Trump is a RINO to many conservatives anyway. RINO, of course, means Republican In Name Only and it’s not altogether clear what precisely informs any public policy that pops into the president’s noggin.

The biggest surprise to me was that conservatives would stand with this candidate to begin with, given his bizarre personal marital history, his acknowledged groping of women, the manner in which he spoke to — and about — his more conservative GOP primary opponents. Whenever I hear Trump talk openly about matters important to social conservatives, one word keeps popping into my head: panderer.

Thus, I shouldn’t be surprised that the president would stake his agenda on cooperation with anyone other than the Freedom Caucus.

He’s not one of them. They certainly do not follow his lead.

The battle, therefore, is joined.

national news, political news

The buck still stops in the Oval Office … doesn’t it?

There once was a time when presidents of the United States took the heat when things went badly.

President Harry Truman had that sign on his Oval Office desk that declared “The Buck Stops Here.” He knew, for example, that his firing of Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command post in Korea would be political dynamite at home. But he did so anyway as a statement of support of civilian authority over the military.

President John F. Kennedy fell on his grenade in 1961 when the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba — which sought to overthrow Fidel Castro  — went badly. He told us that “Victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.” He took responsibility for the failure of the mission.

Other presidents have assumed responsibility for missteps, mishaps and outright tragedy.

The current president is not wired that way. Donald John Trump’s first and last instinct is to blame others.

The commando raid in Yemen in which a brave Navy SEAL died was the fault of the “generals” who put the mission together, Trump said.

Then came the failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump is not taking a lick of responsibility for the failure to cobble together a political alliance that would institute something called the American Health Care Act.

Oh, no! He said first it was the fault of Democrats who didn’t sign on at all with the AHCA. Then it became the fault of the conservative Freedom Caucus of the House GOP. After that, the president tossed a barb at Republican moderates who hated the AHCA as well.

Where, oh where is the president’s responsibility?

Leaders step up when matters go awry, just as they bask in the reflected glory when matters go well. They take the bad along with the good.

If only the current president could actually lead. He simply cannot fulfill a basic tenet of the office he occupies.

Presidents Truman and Kennedy are spinning in their graves.

medical news, national news, political news

Earth to Bannon: Actually, it is a debate

Steven Bannon apparently thinks he can demand whatever he wants and he expects those from whom he demands it to deliver.

Wrong!

The Hill is reporting that Bannon sought to pressure conservative Republican members of Congress into supporting Donald Trump’s alternative to the Affordable Care Act by informing them “this is not a discussion.”

Here is what The Hill reported: “Bannon confronted members of the House Freedom Caucus earlier this week during the White House’s push for the American Health Care Act, Axios’s Mike Allen reported Saturday in his newsletter.

“‘Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill,’ Bannon reportedly said.

“A Freedom Caucus member reportedly replied: ‘You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn’t listen to him, either.'”

There you have it. The White House senior policy adviser tries to browbeat a group of politicians — who have their constituencies to whom they must answer — that they must support a piece of legislation that their “bosses” back home don’t like.

How in the world does that work in the political world?

Well, as Bannon and his boss — the president of the United States — learned the hard way this week, not well at all.

Trump couldn’t be bothered with specifics about the bill, according to The Hill, which reported that the president met with Freedom Caucus members in the White House prior to the decision to give up on the idea of repealing the ACA.

To hell with details? Is that the deal?

As for Bannon’s bluster and bullying, he has just learned that politicians don’t like being told their ideas don’t matter.

medical news, national news, political news

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!

national news, political news

Will the ‘system’ swallow POTUS whole?

This fantasy keeps ricocheting around my noggin. Here’s how it goes.

Donald J. Trump sold himself as a no-nonsense, kick-butt business mogul who brooked no foolishness from anyone. Then he got elected president and learned that “I alone” cannot repair what he said is wrong with the country.

He set out to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act and then ran smack into the buzzsaw otherwise known as the House Freedom Caucus, whose members hate the cooked-up alternative to the ACA. Democrats hate it, too, as much as they hate the president.

If the ACA repeal fails today, does that signal the start of a string of failures for a man who told us over and over that he never seemed to fail at anything?

What, then, happens when he cannot enact tax reform, or get the wall built on our southern border, or institute an infrastructure rebuilding program?

What happens if he can’t “destroy ISIS” all by himself? What happens if he keeps getting stern resistance from those on the far right — who don’t trust him anyway — as well as those on the left who are still steamed that he got elected president in the first place?

My fantasy is that Trump might decide the fight ain’t worth it. He’ll call Vice President Pence into the Oval Office and tell the veep, “Mike, take it away. It’s all  yours, my man. I’m going to take Melania and Barron back to New York and we can vacation to our hearts’ content at Mar-a-Lago and no one will give a crap about how much it costs. Besides, this house in D.C. isn’t nearly as nice as my digs in Florida. I’m outta here.”

Yes, that’s why I call it a fantasy. However, one never knows.

medical news, national news, political news

Trump the ‘deal-maker’ faces grievous setback

Donald J. Trump told us — many times — during the 2016 presidential campaign that the greatest skill he would bring to the presidency would be his ability to close the deal.

He made a fortune working out the “best” deals in the history of business … he said.

Here we are. Trump is now the president of the United States. He promised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act with something more “affordable” and that no American would be left without health insurance.

Trump and congressional Republican leaders have produced something called the American Health Care Act. But there’s this little problem with it.

The Congressional Budget Office’s “scoring” of it pegs the number of Americans who would lose health insurance at 24 million. What’s more, the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives hates the AHCA. They call it “Obamacare light.”

So do congressional Democrats. No surprise there.

Crucial vote coming up

The AHCA goes to a vote Thursday in the House. Freedom Caucus members aren’t budging. The president went to Capitol Hill to pitch the AHCA. He threatened some House members that they’d lose their seats in 2018 if they oppose the bill.

Freedom Caucus leaders say they now have enough votes to kill the AHCA. Which means that a Senate vote won’t matter.

Wasn’t this supposed to be the president’s main selling point? Is this how he closes the deal?

The Affordable Care Act, which has brought 20 million Americans into the health insurance system who previously couldn’t afford it, appears to much harder to “repeal and replace” than Donald Trump predicted it would be.

I will await the president’s response to what appears to be a stunning political setback in the making. I’m wondering if he’s going to say the House vote was “rigged.”

medical news

Politics can be so very brutal among conservatives

Politics is fickle, unfaithful and cruel.

Donald J. Trump scored big election victories in some of the nation’s most conservative congressional districts. And yet … many of those members of Congress representing those districts might be about to turn their guns on the president over his endorsement of what they call a “light” version of the Affordable Care Act.

The American Health Care Act has been put forward. The president is on board with the plan that offers tax credits for people seeking health insurance; it contains many of the features popular with the Affordable Care Act, which the AHCA is designed to replace.

Congress’s more conservative members, though, dislike it. They’re digging in. They’re fighting among themselves, not to mention with the president.

What to do? That’s the problem facing the master negotiator Donald John Trump as he tries to persuade the hard-core among his Republican brethren that the AHCA is worth approving and sending to his desk.

This is a tough sale to make with those among the GOP who just don’t want anything on the books that resembles — even in the slightest sense — something that was enacted at the behest of the former president, Barack Hussein Obama.

We’re likely now to see if the negotiator in chief is as good at this political game as he bragged about incessantly on his way to the White House.