Trump's Uncertain Next Move

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on March 28, 2017 With Fri­day’s col­lapse of the Re­pub­lic­an ef­fort to de­cap­it­ate Pres­id­ent Obama’s Af­ford­able Care Act, it would be an un­der­state­ment to say that the GOP is in dis­ar­ray. There isn’t much of a de­fense against the charge that after vot­ing more than 60 times over sev­en years to re­peal Obama­care, they couldn’t come up with any­thing to re­place it that could pass the House, let alone the Sen­ate, when the vote really coun­ted. A sub­stan­tial ele­ment of the very con­ser­vat­ive House Free­dom Caucus didn’t think the Amer­ic­an Health Care Act was enough of an im­prove­ment on the much-re­viled Obama­care, while a num­ber of Re­pub­lic­an mod­er­ates and mem­bers in swing dis­tricts felt that it was too dra­coni­an. Much of the blame is fo­cused on the Free­dom Caucus, a group that many say wouldn’t take yes for an an­swer. The truth is that for many of the most con­ser­vat­ive mem­bers of the House (and a few in the Sen­ate), their view of the role of gov­ern­ment is so min­im­al­ist that many would