After the American Health Care Act went down in flames last month, blame fell mostly on the House Freedom Caucus, a cabal of conservative anti-establishment Republicans. But if the revised version of the Obamacare overhaul similarly fails, no honest analyst will be able to blame conservatives. Blame will belong wholly to centrist Republicans.
In every election campaign since 2010, every Republican has pledged to repeal Obamacare. Since Republicans rode that promise to a House majority that year, the House has voted more than 90 times for repeal (symbolic votes, all, under President Barack Obama). Now the Freedom Caucus has announced its support for an amended repeal bill, Republicans are closer than ever to finally delivering on their promise. It relies only on centrists to rejoin their party on this crucial issue for which the voters put them in office.
The GOP has been negotiating for weeks and, thanks to centrist Rep. Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, the party could be approaching a breakthrough. The MacArthur amendment revives the healthcare bill by allowing individual states to opt out of a number of Obamacare’s insurance regulations.
The amendment doesn’t repeal Obamacare completely, and so it is a serious compromise for the Freedom Caucus to give their blessing. In a statement announcing their support, members of the group explained that the revised legislation helped them keep their “promise to the American people to lower healthcare costs.”
If you believed the running narrative in Washington that Freedom Caucus members were the ones derailing Obamacare repeal and replacement, you would think the problem is solved. But it’s not. This provides a hint as to where the source of GOP dysfunction lies.
The problem now is the Tuesday Group. A loose collection of about 50 centrist Republicans, the caucus has been the most overlooked obstructionists in the healthcare debate.
Though dubbed “moderates” by the media, the Tuesday Group has demonstrated an aversion to compromise. Rep. Chris Collins of New York summed up their negotiation strategy, telling reporters that when the Freedom Caucus calls to talk policy, he and his colleagues “just hang up.” And so far, that strategy has worked.
The Tuesday Group has managed to make an effective foil out of the Freedom Caucus. By accusing their colleagues of obstruction, these centrist Republicans are able to hide their secret taste for Obamacare. While their conservative colleagues held up the American Health Care Act because it didn’t gut enough of the law, the Tuesday Group quietly opposed the legislation because it felt the bill repealed too much.
Summing up the group’s concern, Rep. Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey all but endorsed Obamacare, saying, “Many south Jersey residents would be left with financial or without the coverage they now receive.” Supporting Obamacare is a perfectly valid position for these congressmen, but when that congressman ran on repealing the bill and attacked conservatives who helped derail the last repeal, it becomes impossible not to question the good faith of the Tuesday crowd.
Strangely though, that sort of opposition went unpunished by the Republican brass. While President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan piled on the Freedom Caucus for torpedoing the bill, the Tuesday Group sidestepped any responsibility.
The Freedom Caucus always takes the blame, for a couple of reasons. First, this group of Tea Party-infused lawmakers has a history of making impossible demands and lacking tolerance for compromise. Second, the overwhelming bias of the Washington media is towards centrism. Journalists who believe they’re being impartial hold up the centrists of both parties as the paragons of sensibility. That’s an undeserved reputation.
In recent weeks the Freedom Caucus has been anything but obstructionist. The group discarded its hardline demands for full repeal long ago, coming to the White House instead where it negotiated directly with Vice President Pence and made sweeping concessions. The group went from “hell no” to “okay fine” in less than a month.
Meanwhile, not a single Tuesday Group member has signed on with the second repeal effort. It was still negotiating behind closed doors as we wrote this editorial. The group’s leader, Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, wasn’t bullish on the salvaged bill’s prospects Wednesday evening, telling reporters he had “the same concerns, and this didn’t really address them.”
If Dent and company don’t come around on the revised bill, they will sink it. There would be nothing the Freedom Caucus, the Speaker’s office or the White House could do about it. And even as premiums skyrocket and access to insurers dwindle, that could be a perfectly logical position.
If the group is so moved by conscience, so be it. In such an event, though, it will have no choice but to admit a secret many Republican colleagues have long suspected: Tuesday Group lawmakers are bad-faith negotiators who claimed they wanted to repeal Obamacare when they really always wanted to keep it in place.
This revelation could perhaps change the belief that dominates Washington, that centrists monopolize common good sense and the Freedom Caucus is peopled by destroyers. More generally, the Obamacare debate may show some Beltway observers that sitting in the middle doesn’t always mean you’re “moderate.” It sometimes means you simply refuse to take a stand.
