Posted on 03/25/2017 5:24:41 PM PDT by SkyPilot
As he gave his brief press conference Friday afternoon confirming that Republicans had pulled their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, House Speaker Paul Ryan both looked and sounded like a hangdog high school football coach spilling out a few defeated platitudes after watching his team get ground into the turf.
“Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains,” he said, “and, well, we’re feeling those growing pains today.”
“We came really close today, but we came up short.”
“I will not sugarcoat this. This is a disappointing day for us. Doing big things is hard.”
In a sense, Ryan was being too easy on himself. Yes, “doing big things” is difficult in Washington. The Capitol dome is practically designed to bottle up and suffocate dramatic change. But whatever growing pains they may have experienced, fractious Democrats still managed to execute an ambitious agenda in the early Obama years without a major legislative collapse the likes of which we all witnessed this week. The rollout of the American Health Care Act, by contrast, was a mystifying debacle. And as much as anything, its demise is an indictment of Paul Ryan that should shatter what’s left of his myth as competent policy thinker or political leader.
Journalists often describe Ryan as a “wonk”—or if you’re CNN, a “legendary wonk“—mostly because he has sold himself as one. It’s Ryan’s #brand, which he’s nurtured with a stream of lofty white papers and interviews with credulous reporters. But in truth, he’s always been far better at playing a policy nerd on TV than at doing the hard work of crafting legislation....
Aside from the occasional PowerPoint, it’s really not clear what the man is good for.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
That's an awesome thing to tell people when you fail to deliver. I'm gonna start telling people that! My business is going to go into warp speed!!!!
In this case, however, I couldn't be happier that he failed.
I hope his just-shy-of-unanimous choice as speaker tells you something about the whole Republican Party. it does not matter what nominal organization these people belong to. They are terminally corrupt. They were elected to represent their home district constituents but took on the job of, instead, representing the Chamber of Commerce and George Soros. We have elections such as are held in Communist countries now-it does not matter who you vote for. Each and every elected official, and they do elect at least some officials in Communist countries, represents the Communist Party, and not even the local org of the Party, but rather the General Secretary.
Of all angles on this matter, only this rings supremely true.
The GOP has controlled both houses of congress for most of the last 23 years.
Lets not allow the media and their cohorts drive the agenda with the explanations. Conservatives will never be asked why they rejected it. They must take the initiative and proclaim why by taking this legislation apart piece by piece and explain their solid reasons for rejecting it..
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