Republican Civil War Flares Up Again Over TrumpCare

A match made in Republican Heaven

It's been fun last week writing about Ryan and Trump beating up Republicans who questioned the wisdom of shoving TrumpCare down America's throat. Although polling is clearly telling swing state Republicans that their careers hang in the balance if they vote for Ryan's unpopular and dangerous TrumpCare proposal, first Ryan and then Trump threatened to destroy any Republicans who oppose it. I think ads like this overt one started March 10:



I've watched 25 of them, clear threats in their districts to Republicans like Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC). Meadows says he's still voting NO and claims his own whip count shows 40 NO votes. And then there were the more subtle threats like this one the Ruan-controlled SuperPAC ran in Darrell Issa's district after flippity-floppity Issa said he would vote against TrumpCare:



I've watched a dozen like that one, almost all aimed at vulnerable Republicans in swing districts like Rod Blum (IA), David Young (IA), David Valadao (CA), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Don Bacon (NE), Mike Coffman (CO), Will Hurd (TX), and Carlos Curbelo (FL). Every one of these congressmen is a DCCC target for 2018 and every one of them knows that a vote for TrumpCare is a career-ending vote in his district.

Thursday David Drucker, a blogger for the Washington Examiner reported that this same Ryan-controlled SuperPAC is now attacking House Republicans with robocalls-- a million of them!

The political nonprofit organization aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday launched a robocall campaign targeting voters in 30 districts that are represented mostly by Republicans opposed to the GOP healthcare bill.

American Action Network is applying pressure to the House Freedom Caucus, the group of Republican insurgents pressing Ryan and President Trump to make changes to the American Health Care Act. The chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, said his group has the votes to block the legislation in the House.

The 1 million-robocalls campaign is part of the group's ongoing campaign to encourage passage of the AHCA. The group has spent more than $10 million this year alone promoting Republican health care policy. Here is the script of the robocall, voiced by a generic male:

After eight years of suffering under Obamacare, conservatives are close to repealing and replacing Obamacare with President Trump and Speaker Ryan's reforms to lower costs, eliminate job destroying mandates, and put patients and doctors in charge of health care instead of Washington bureaucrats. The legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare is coming up for a vote very soon.

Please contact your congressman [name] at [phone number] and tell him to join you in supporting President Trump and Speaker Ryan's plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the American Health Care Act.

The problem with this aggression from Ryan-- problem for us, I mean-- is that it's aimed at extreme right fanatics who are in deep red districts and aren't vulnerable to general election battles. (The one exception is Rob Blum of Iowa, whose district is blue, but who is probably protected by the kind of venal DCCC incompetence and cluelessness that handed him the perfect opponent in 2016: "ex"-Republican Monica Vernon, who real Democrats didn't want to vote for-- and, in many cases, didn't. The district went for Bernie over Clinton, so, of course, the DCCC decided the way to make sure Democrats wouldn't be fired up was to force a candidate on the district significantly to the right of Clinton.)

Anyway, aside from Blum's, these are all safe seats-- unless Ryan and Trump are trying to warn them they could face primaries. And, the deft Trump did in fact, mumble some bullshit about backing primary opponents for any Republicans who defied him on TrumpCare. These are the Republicans he's threatening:

• Mo Brooks (AL)
• Gary Palmer (AL)
• Paul Gosar (AZ)
• David Schweikert (AZ)
• Trent Franks (AZ)
• Ken Buck (FL)
• Ted Yoho (FL)
• Ron DeSantis (FL)
• Bill Posey (FL)
• Jody Hice (GA)
• Rod Blum (IA)
• Raul Labrador (ID)
• Andy Harris (MD)
• Justin Amash (MI)
• Steve Pearce (NM)
• Mark Meadows (NC)
• Jim Jordan (OH)
• Warren Davidson (OH)
• Jim Bridenstine (OK), who is retiring-- and laughing at Trump and Ryan
• Scott Perry (PA)
• Mark Sanford (SC)
• Jeff Duncan (SC)
• Scott DesJarlais (TN)
• Louie Gohmert (TX)
• Ted Poe (TX)
• Randy Weber (TX)
• Brian Babin (TX)
• Dave Brat (VA)
• Morgan Griffith (VA)
• Alex Mooney (WV)

Justin Amash, one of only 4 Republicans to co-sponsor the the Russian Sanctions Review Act and who already faced down a multimillionaire primary opponent the GOP establishment ran against him-- beating Brian Ellis in 2014 by a whopping 57-43%, despite being heavily outspent, took to Señor Trumpanzee's favorite medium to respond yesterday:

And then made clear that Trump was lying again when he claimed to have persuaded House conservatives to give up their opposition to Ryan's TrumpCare disaster and vote for it based on some airy-fairy promises that Papa Trumpanzee would make everything better down the road. Yes, this is going to be great fun to watch-- especially because there are already enough Republicans in the Senate to block the bill even if the House Republicans decide to commit political suicide and pass it.