Oxymorons are words that don’t ordinarily go together—they come across as inherently contradictory. The classic is “jumbo shrimp.” I’ve always liked “congressional ethics”; others prefer “military intelligence.” I held an oxymoron contest one year with students. The co-winners were “study lounge” and “intense apathy.”
Why am I pondering oxymorons this morning? It has to do with the recently failed GOP healthcare fix. It wasn’t really a fix because it left the infrastructure of Obamacare largely intact, fixing virtually nothing, thereby qualifying as an oxymoron in practice.
Those within the GOP who stood firmly against this oxymoron are now being castigated by their fellows. Blame is being cast on the Freedom Caucus for undermining the Trump presidency. They are being told they have to back the president on everything he supports regardless of their own personal views on the efficacy of a proposed bill.
Personally, I’m grateful for those who held to principle, seeing that this bill was not better than what we currently have in Obamacare, and that it could actually be worse in that it undermines more than a temporary resident of the White House—it undermines conservative governing policies.
Yes, President Trump took his lumps with this one, but that’s fine. When you push something wrong, you deserve some lumps.
As is his usual practice, he now distances himself from a failure because . . . well, he simply doesn’t fail. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Here’s where the title of today’s blog comes in. We are in dire need of political honesty, a term that shouldn’t be an oxymoron. What I’m seeing now from some Republicans and/or supposed conservatives is an attempt to shift blame rather dishonestly.
Paul Ryan is the culprit, you see, not Donald Trump. He is the RINO who came up with this failed approach to repeal and replace; Trump is blameless.
Well, I certainly agree that Ryan followed a bad path here. Why he was willing to compromise the pledge Republicans made to wipe out Obamacare is discouraging, to say the least. Yet it’s time for political honesty on the part of those who are excusing Trump.
The president was just as much on board with this failure as Ryan was, yet Trump’s most stalwart defenders refuse to acknowledge it. How do they look past his open advocacy for the proposed bill? How do they ignore that his self-appointed proxy, Steve Bannon, went to the Freedom Caucus and told them they had no choice but to vote for this bill?
After the bill went down to inglorious defeat without even a vote, he was all aTwitter, ranting against those who held to principle. Now he’s saying he can get a better deal working with Democrats.
Right. Can you imagine what kind of compromise would come from that?
Donald Trump owns this just as much as Paul Ryan. But don’t tell AlwaysTrumpers that. They have become blind and deaf to his shortcomings.
He’s now trying to change the subject.
He’s the captain, regardless of what his defenders want us to believe. If you are upset at Ryan and see nothing amiss in what Trump did with this phony bill, political honesty is missing. If Ryan is to blame for it, so is Trump.
Please stop the dishonesty. Don’t be a walking oxymoron.
By the way, Democrats are playing this as a win, but let’s keep one thing in mind.
We’re all losers with Obamacare. It’s time for a genuine repeal and a principled plan for replacement.