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Tim Alberta's excellent book "American Carnage" covers this period in detail— the closest thing to a short answer on it is that the Freedom Caucus is essentiall
by mikepurvis 6y ago
Tim Alberta's excellent book "American Carnage" covers this period in detail— the closest thing to a short answer on it is that the Freedom Caucus is essentially a second party inside the Republican party, and are hardwired into a scorched earth mode where they vote no to anything that has even a whiff of compromise to it.
This time was an extraordinary humiliation for Paul Ryan in particular because it should have been an opportunity to get lots of ideologically-motivated things done really quickly, and yet they failed to achieve even incremental progress on Trump's top legislative priorities, like repealing the ACA and securing funding for the wall.
- simonh 6y agoThe problem there was although they were stated to be priorities, neither Trump nor the Republican caucuses in Congress or the Senate actually thought either things were a good idea. Those weren’t ideologically motivated objectives, they were publicity motivated positions.
- mikepurvis 6y agoOkay, fair, but the end result is still a two year tenure starting in 2016 where the whole federal government was until Republican control, and almost no progress was made on anything. The big achievement was passing a set of unfunded tax cuts— it's got to be pretty devastating for that to be the high point of a career (Ryan's) built on being a deficit hawk.
- simonh 6y agoSure, but I suspect that deadlock was more to do with the specifics of the awkward relationship between mainstream Republican representatives and Trump in particular than a systemic problem. Ugh, as someone who considers themselves a natural (moderate) conservative it pains me to say this, but frankly it's just as well.