As Donald Trump continues burning Republican bridges he needs to advance his big-government agenda, he has increased his personal attacks on the RINO leadership of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan–a strategy that even members of the Trump cult says will fail.
Trump repeated his attacks on Dumb and Dumber this week, blaming them for the failure to repeal Obamacare and for not passing legislation to raise the debt ceiling so the government can spend money it doesn’t have.
While it’s true McConnell and Ryan are failures—they’ve been failing for years—Trump isn’t without blame for where things are in Washington today.
Let’s begin with Obamacare. Trump only picked up the “repeal” mantra when he decided to run for president as a Republican. Prior to that, he had a long history of supporting government-run healthcare, and as such, carried no strong convictions on seeing it overturned.
Still, Congress failed to pass a repeal bill, right? Not really. Neither the House nor the Senate proposed a repeal of Obamacare. The legislation voted on in both chambers was nothing more than a fake repeal which kept most of Obamacare in place.
What about the debt ceiling? While Trump is blaming McConnell and Ryan, he bears some of the blame here as well. His claim that he requested debt ceiling legislation be tied to a VA spending bill is only half-true, as the Senate had neither the time nor the likelihood to pass it in that manner.
I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2017
…didn't do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2017
Trump’s claim that Mickey and Ryan are failing to pass a debt ceiling increase is rhetorical nonsense. McConnell and Ryan have already stated their intention to cave on the issue. As I said earlier, they’re big-government guys just like Trump.
Trump ran on the promise that he was the only one who could fix America because he was, after all, the great deal maker. So, if McConnell and Ryan are doing what they’ve always done and have worked to turn the Republican party into the Trumplican party, then Trump carries as much blame for these failures as Congress does.
And that’s why it’s called The Art of the Fail.
David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative, your source for opinion that’s politically-incorrect and always “right.” His articles can also be found on RedState.com.
His daily radio commentary is nationally syndicated with Salem Radio Network and can be heard on stations across America.
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