RUSH: This health care bill — let me find this Philip Klein piece folks. I don’t even want to paraphrase this. I want to read this thing to you. Headline: “GOP Cave on Obamacare Repeal is the Biggest Broken Promise in Political History.” Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner. “I don’t think it’s fair to scapegoat Freedom Caucusers here. They are being blamed for making the naive mistake of assuming that Republicans wanted to do what they were promising to do for seven years.”
It’s like I told Snerdley this morning, you know what, you can really set all this aside and look at the lay of the land, and we’ve been hearing for seven years, repeal and replace Obamacare. There have been any number of bills the Republicans have passed, sent up to Obama. Some of them got there and he vetoed. But after all of this huffing and puffing and after all of this back-and-forth, after all this negotiating we still have Obamacare.
Look, it’s easy to say after the fact, and I think I’ve said this before the fact, I think I’ve said it. I’ve had my doubts the Republicans ever really wanted to get rid of this. It’s an entitlement. They don’t like taking an entitlement. It’s Santa Claus. You don’t want to cancel Christmas. That’s how they look at this stuff in many ways.
But Klein’s point here is it’s clear to him that the Republicans at large didn’t want this, and to be blaming the Freedom Caucus for it is a cop-out ’cause he hasn’t seen any other Republicans really, really trying to get this done. He said this bill was an embarrassment. This bill expanded certain things in Obamacare, it clearly didn’t repeal anything. They’ve had seven years to plan for this day. They’ve raised money on this whole possibility here. They have made promise after promise after promise, and Philip Klein thinks this is the biggest broken promise in political history.
“House conservatives, if they could be blamed for anything, it’s for having the audacity to urge leadership to actually honor seven years of pledges to voters to repeal Obamacare.” What he’s saying is the only people that really took this seriously is the Freedom Caucus. In other words, the Freedom Caucus says, “Oh, you want to repeal and replace Obamacare? Okay, good. Well, here’s what we support. Here’s how we’re gonna do it,” and they did. And it turned out to be nothing like what they thought it was gonna be because it didn’t repeal anything, and it didn’t replace anything.
It left intact a lot of Obamacare and relied on the Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, to start taking things out of it, which they said could get put back in the next time a Democrat wins. Let’s put this in the bill to take these Obama regulations out. House leadership said no, can’t do it. So his point is the only mistake the Freedom Caucus made was taking seriously the claims from other Republicans they wanted to get rid of it. In Klein’s view he hasn’t seen any real evidence they really want to get rid of it. They want a legislative win, but he thinks they’re getting a raw deal.
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RUSH: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I know. I need to point out that Philip Klein — who I’m quoting here from the Washington Examiner — is a Never Trumper emeritus. He’s a former Never Trumper, he’s a current Never Trumper, he’s a never-ending Never Trumper. He’s a Never Trumper forever. He’s a proud and happy Never Trumper. So get that out there. But he’s still defending the Freedom Caucus here.
And just to represent, he thinks that if they need to be blamed for anything, it’s for having the audacity to believe the Republican leadership actually wanted to repeal Obamacare, so they came up with ways to do it. Now, we’re talking about Mark Meadows and our buddy Louie Gohmert, and it is Klein’s opinion here that the leadership didn’t really want to get rid of this. They didn’t want to tackle it. They didn’t want to get their arms and hands dirty. They just wanted to go through the motions.
He said, “What’s so utterly disgraceful is not just that Republicans failed so miserably, but that they barely tried, raising questions about whether they ever actually wanted to repeal Obamacare in the first place.” Here’s the bottom line, from Philip Klein, Never Trumper forever. The Republicans didn’t want to repeal Obamacare that badly. Sure, if the Supreme Court had done their job for them, then they would accept it. They’d be okay with Obamacare going away. But as you know, John Roberts saved it.
When push came to shove, they weren’t willing to put in the elbow grease. “Failing to get the votes on one particular bill is one thing. But failing and then walking away on seven years of promises is a pathetic abdication of duty. The Republican Party is a party without a purpose.” Now, admittedly, he’s ticked off ’cause they nominated Trump and he’s a Never Trumper. But this isn’t really about Trump. I mean, I would love to see the guy unload on Trump’s role in this.
But he’s defending the Freedom Caucus here against an unfair assault when all they did was actually believe that everybody meant get rid of this. That’s what they did! And that’s what was rejected. And now they’re being threatened: Better get on board the next time or else I’m going to the Democrats.