One of the main campaign promises responsible for the GOP’s rise to the pinnacle of political power over the past decade or so was the promise to destroy Obamacare “root and branch.” It’s the reason voters gave Republicans the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the presidency in 2016.
As we know all too well, the Republican trifecta of power squandered their opportunity to correct America’s course away from the destructive path created by the progressive agenda of the Far Left and toward the Constitution and conservatism. Instead, Trump and the GOP spent their political capital protecting themselves and the party.
To be fair however, Trump and the GOP repeated their promise during the 2018 campaign season to really, really, really repeal Obamacare if voters allowed them to remain in the majority.
Unfortunately for the GOP, years of repeating the lie to repeal Obamacare motivated voters to reject the Republican Party in the 2018 midterms. Instead, America voted to give the Democrats their largest midterm victory since Watergate.
Amazingly, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy doesn’t believe that the GOP’s broken promises had anything to do with the Blue Tsunami that kept him from becoming Speaker of the House. Instead, the California congressman blames conservatives who attempted to keep their promise to repeal Obamacare for the GOP’s defeat.
In recordings obtained by the Washington Post, McCarthy told donors at a private meeting that the push by so-called conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus to include a roll back of pre-existing conditions in any Obamacare repeal bill was responsible for the GOP’s loss of the House.
“That amendment put [the] preexisting condition campaign against us, and so even people who are running for the very first time got attacked on that. And that was the defining issue and the most important issue in the race.”
McCarthy also told the gathering of Republican donors that he would only support 2020 candidates who could “find a solution at the end of the day,” which is code for let’s elect establishment Republicans who will find a way to save Obamacare while appearing to repeal it.
This isn’t an isolated incident. McCarthy has been targeting conservatives who fail to play the GOP-establishment game, and he has openly let his disdain for them be known. Shortly after being elected Minority Leader, McCarthy channeled his inner John Boehner and punished HFC members who voted against him by removing them from committee assignments.
Upon learning that McCarthy blamed the House Freedom Caucus for 2018, Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told the Post that he found the reported comments “very troublesome” and added: “I hoped the us-versus-them mentality of the past was something that indeed was in the past.”
Meadows also told The Hill that he hasn’t “had any follow-up conversations with Leader McCarthy” since the story broke to get clarification.
Personally, I don’t think it will matter even if Meadows does talk to McCarthy because the House Freedom Caucus abandoned conservatism for Trumpservatism in 2018, and they recently announced their commitment to work with McCarthy and the GOP establishment to save the party from itself.
David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative. His politically incorrect and always “right” columns are also featured on NOQReport.com.
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