David Brooks is a very smart conservative who has historically supported the Republican Party. He has come to understand the real political problems that we face and he argues that Trump exploited those problems in a negative fashion. That is, he told his supporters what was wrong and they agreed with him. Now that he is in office he has shown that he has no positive plan to offer to his troubled supporters. That has become apparent in his efforts to replace Obamacare with something better.
Trump's problems begin with issues inside of the Republican Party. The GOP has been fighting against government intervention in the healthcare market since the Kennedy administration. When Obama pushed the ACA through Congress it helped to energize the political reaction that spawned the "Tea Party" which is now called the Freedom Caucus in the House. The agenda of the Freedom Caucus is summed up easily. It wants to cut federal taxes so that government cannot fund programs like the ACA. To make matters worse, the ACA raised taxes on wealthy Americans in order to pay for the subsidies that enabled low income citizens to purchase health insurance. Its no wonder that repealing the ACA has been at the top the Republican agenda since it was passed into law.
Brooks does not stop with his critique of the GOP. He argues that Obama spent much of his political capital on passing the healthcare bill against total opposition from the GOP. If Obama had been more aware of the economic issues faced by many Americans he might have promoted programs that would have defused the issues that Trump later exploited. (Brooks did not mention the fact that Obama also had the financial crisis and a recession on his plate that the GOP did not want to fix)
Brooks goes on to declare that Republicans can't rely upon the nostrums that became part of the GOP gospel in the Reagan Era. Supply side economics is dead and government needs to be more powerful in order to preserve our system of government.
The political debate in the old era was big government versus small government and the state versus the market system. Brooks argues that we need a stronger state to provide the safety net that our citizens need. Moreover, we can't preserve our market system without a stronger state.
Trump's election made the social issues that he exploited more apparent to the conservative David Brooks. He has observed the mess Republican's are making as they try to repeal the ACA and replace it with a better solution. The Republican Party is fatally splintered between its Freedom Party members and Paul Ryan who is a hold over from the Reagan era. Trump pushed the House to pass a flawed replacement plan that will not be passed by the Senate. The Republican Party is unable to govern. The result will be chaos. Its hard to know how the response to chaos will turn out. The Republican Party is a creature of the past and Trump will not be able to make good on the promises that he made during his campaign. He has no understanding of the policies that he promoted and he has no idea about how to run our government.
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